Head of Department to give prestigious BCS-FACS evening seminar in London: Secure Electronic Voting
Wednesday 27 February 2008
Professor Steve Schneider has been invited to give an evening talk for the prestigious BCS-FACS seminar series. The seminar is being held at the BCS London offices on Monday 3rd March at 5:45pm. Steve will talk about the Prêt à Voter electronic voting system being developed by the University of Surrey and the University of Newcastle.
BCS-FACS Evening Seminar Series
Secure Electronic Voting
Professor Steve Schneider
3 March 2008 5.45pm
BCS London Offices
First Floor, The Davidson Building
5 Southampton Street
London WC2E 7HA
Elections need to be trustworthy, and to be seen to be trustworthy, in order for the electorate to have confidence in their outcomes. The introduction of technology into the electoral process brings potential new benefits, but may also increase the risk that accidental flaws or security weaknesses in the equipment leave an election open to tampering. Voting systems, whether run manually or on machines, should provide voters with the ability to cast a private vote, and to have confidence that their vote is really included in the final tally.
The Prêt à Voter electronic voting system is designed to provide these properties, and some further ones known as end-to-end verifiability, not currently present in standard UK elections: a receipt for the voters so that they can check their vote has been included in the tally, and can prove if it has not; and publication of the votes so that the count can be independently checked. This is achieved by making public all the stages in the processing of the votes, enabling the election to be audited independently. All this is possible while maintaining secrecy of the vote. Although electronic support for the election is necessary, the electronic components do not themselves need to be trusted because their outputs can be independently audited. This talk discusses the issues involved in electronic voting systems, describes the Prêt à Voter approach to electronic voting, and introduces the implementation of the system developed at the University of Surrey in conjunction with the University of Newcastle in 2007.
Refreshments will be served from 5.15pm.
The seminar is free of charge and open to everyone.
BCS-FACS Website: http://www.bcs-facs.org
BCS-FACS Evening Seminars: http://www.bcs-facs.org/events/EveningSeminars
Location of venue: http://www.epsg.org.uk/locations/bcsss-guide.html