Prêt a Voter with Acknowledgement Codes
- When?
- Thursday 17 February 2011, 14:00 to 15:00
- Where?
- 39BB02
- Open to:
- Students, Staff
- Speaker:
- Professor Peter Ryan
A scheme is presented in which a Pretty Good Democracy style acknowledgement code mechanism is incorporated into Prêt a Voter. Voters get immediate confirmation at the time of casting of the correct registration of their receipt on the Web Bulletin Board. As with PGD, the registration and revealing of the acknowledgement code is performed by a threshold set of Trustees. Verification of the registration of the vote is now part of the vote casting and therefore more convenient for the voters. This verification mechanism supplements the usual verification on the Web Bulletin Board mechanism, that is still available to voters.
The scheme presented here thus provides a higher degree of verifiability that conventional Prêt a Voter and means that the assurance is less reliant on the diligence of voters in visiting the Bulletin Board after vote casting their votes. Besides the technical advantages, it seems probable that this acknowledgement code mechanism may provide voters with greater confidence that their vote will be accurately tallied. We also explore the possibility of using the Trustees to also help verify the ballot signature and to perform ballot audits.
