Publicly Understandable Electronic Voting: A Non-Cryptographic, End-to-End Verifiable Scheme

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2603.21833v1
• Date: Mon, 23 Mar 2026 11:19:15 GMT
• Title: Publicly Understandable Electronic Voting: A Non-Cryptographic, End-to-End Verifiable Scheme
• Abstract summary: Software-Free Verification (SFV) is a standard requiring that voters can independently verify election integrity without relying on any software.<n>We propose a practical, non-cryptographic in-booth voting scheme that achieves SFV for national-scale elections.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Modern democracies face an existential crisis of waning public trust in election results. While End-to-End Verifiable (E2E-V) voting systems promise mathematically secure elections, their reliance on complex cryptography creates a ``black box'' that forces blind trust in opaque software or external experts, ultimately failing to build genuine public confidence. To solve this, we introduce the concept of Software-Free Verification (SFV) -- a standard requiring that voters can independently verify election integrity without relying on any software. We propose a practical, non-cryptographic in-booth voting scheme that achieves SFV for national-scale elections. Our approach leverages a public bulletin board of randomized (Pseudonym, Candidate) pairs, where a mechanically generated pseudonym is hidden among real decoy votes on a physical receipt. Our scheme empowers citizens to audit the election using only basic arithmetic via a hierarchical Public Ledger, while anchoring the overall digital tally to physical evidence and Risk-Limiting Audits (RLAs) to guarantee systemic integrity. The result is a system that bridges the gap between mathematical security and public transparency, offering a viable blueprint for restoring trust in democratic infrastructure.

Related papers

• It Doesn't Take a Thief: Optical-Scan Voting Systems Fail Even Without Adversaries [45.88028371034407]
  This paper introduces a taxonomy of non-adversarial failure modes organized into intuitive categories.<n>We map common verification mechanisms against this taxonomy, identifying gaps that no paper-based audit can detect or correct.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-07-29T16:27:42Z)
• Advances in STV Margin Computation [48.286570305557525]
  This paper presents substantial improvements on an existing algorithm for computing lower bounds on the margin of an STV election.<n>These improvements allow us to compute higher lower bounds for real STV elections, making mismatch-based risk-limiting audits more practical.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-07-23T11:08:52Z)
• Secrecy and Verifiability: An Introduction to Electronic Voting [0.0]
  We argue that any electronic voting system needs two essential properties: ballot secrecy and verifiability.<n>An election scheme that is a complete black box offers ballot secrecy, but verification of the outcome is impossible.<n>This tutorial makes these ideas accessible to readers outside electronic voting.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-02-12T20:48:47Z)
• Are Voters Willing to Collectively Secure Elections? Unraveling a Practical Blockchain Voting System [0.0]
  This paper proposes the concept of collectively secure voting, in which voters themselves can opt in as secret holders to protect ballot secrecy.<n>A practical blockchain-based collectively secure voting system is designed and implemented.<n>Results show a high willingness to act as secret holders, reliable participation in share release, and high security confidence in the proposed system.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-10-09T18:02:40Z)
• A Quantum-Secure Voting Framework Using QKD, Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and Verifiable Receipts [0.4511923587827302]
  We introduce a quantum-secure voting framework that integrates Quantum Key Distribution (QKD), Dual-Key Symmetric Encryption, and verifiable receipt mechanisms.<n>The framework enables voters to establish encryption keys securely, cast encrypted ballots, and verify their votes through receipt-based confirmation.<n>Results demonstrate that the system can process large numbers of votes efficiently with low latency and minimal error rates.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-10-03T20:13:30Z)
• Inference Attacks on Encrypted Online Voting via Traffic Analysis [19.653420340564946]
  We examine how adversaries can exploit metadata from encrypted network traffic to uncover sensitive information during online voting.<n>Our analysis reveals that, even without accessing the content, it is possible to infer critical voter actions, such as whether a person votes, the exact moment a ballot is submitted, and whether the ballot is valid or spoiled.<n>We evaluate our attacks on two widely used online voting platforms, one proprietary and one partially open source, achieving classification accuracy as high as 99.5%.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-09-19T07:14:01Z)
• SmartphoneDemocracy: Privacy-Preserving E-Voting on Decentralized Infrastructure using Novel European Identity [0.0]
  SmartphoneDemocracy is a novel e-voting protocol that combines three key technologies.<n>Our protocol enables voters to register and cast ballots anonymously and verifiably directly from their smartphones.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-07-13T02:39:10Z)
• Efficient Lower Bounding of Single Transferable Vote Election Margins [56.12949230611067]
  Single transferable vote (STV) is a system of preferential proportional voting employed in multi-seat elections.<n>The margin of victory, or simply'margin', is the smallest number of ballots that need to be manipulated to alter the set of winners.<n>Lower bounds on the margin can also be used for this purpose, in cases where exact margins are difficult to compute.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-01-24T13:39:23Z)
• Optimal bounds for dissatisfaction in perpetual voting [84.02572742131521]
  We consider a perpetual approval voting method that guarantees that no voter is dissatisfied too many times.<n>We identify a sufficient condition on voter behavior under which a sublinear growth of dissatisfaction is possible.<n>We present a voting method with sublinear guarantees on dissatisfaction under bounded conflicts, based on the standard techniques from prediction with expert advice.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-12-20T19:58:55Z)
• Adaptively Weighted Audits of Instant-Runoff Voting Elections: AWAIRE [61.872917066847855]
  Methods for auditing instant-runoff voting (IRV) elections are either not risk-limiting or require cast vote records (CVRs), the voting system's electronic record of the votes on each ballot. We develop an RLA method that uses adaptively weighted averages of test supermartingales to efficiently audit IRV elections when CVRs are not available.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-07-20T15:55:34Z)
• Secure Order Based Voting Using Distributed Tallying [5.407319151576265]
  One of the main challenges in e-voting systems is to certify that the computed results are consistent with the cast ballots.<n>We propose a secure voting protocol for elections governed by order-based voting rules.<n>Our protocol, in which the tallying task is distributed among several independent talliers, offers perfect ballot secrecy.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2022-05-21T12:17:21Z)
• Regulation conform DLT-operable payment adapter based on trustless - justified trust combined generalized state channels [77.34726150561087]
  Economy of Things (EoT) will be based on software agents running on peer-to-peer trustless networks. We give an overview of current solutions that differ in their fundamental values and technological possibilities. We propose to combine the strengths of the crypto based, decentralized trustless elements with established and well regulated means of payment.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-07-03T10:45:55Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.