Analyzing and Improving the Security of Internet Elections
Adam Wierzbicki, Krzystof Pietrzak · Vieweg eBooks · 2007
Internet elections are one of the tools of eGovernment that seems a natural application of the increasingly ubiquitous computer networks. The possibility of voting from your own home would decrease the costs of elections, and as a consequence, elections could be carried out more frequently. This would increase the participation of citizens in the democratic state, enabling a transition from a representational to a direct democracy. Yet, Internet elections are vulnerable to a large number of security threats, and the risk of failing to provide security is the disruption of democratic society. For this reason, many previous attempts to provide Internet elections have failed, and their use has been discouraged by security experts. In this article, the conclusions of previous security analyses — the SERVE security report and the experiences from the Estonian Internet elections — are updated to take into account recent technological developments. The article presents new methods that can be used to increase the security of Internet elections.