Assessing the usability of open verifiable e-voting systems: A trial with the system Prêt à Voter
Marco A. A. Winckler, Regina Bernhaupt, Philippe A. Palanque, David Lundin, Kieran Leach, Peter Ryan, Eugenio Alberdi, Lorenzo Strigini · 2009
E-voting systems – the combination of vote-casting, ballot transmission and counting, auditing and monitoring systems – have been gaining much attention from the international community as a suitable solution for preventing errors issued from human reliability on vote counting. Whilst many reports have said about currently available pilots and proposals are sensible, some fundamental issues remain unresolved such as the fact that most of systems are unverifiable by voters, candidates and returning officers. In most proposals, votes disappear into the machine so that it is impossible to audit votes without removing the secrecy of votes. In more recent years, an electronic voting system called Prêt à Voter has been developed to allow verification of individual casts and audit elections. Prêt à Voter combines paper trail for recounts and a sophisticated cryptography mechanism to ensure secrecy of votes and vote verification. However, as any other e-voting system, the user adoption and the user acceptance of Prêt à Voter not only depend on how technically sound the system is but also how voters perceive the system as trusted. Despite the fact Prêt à Voter has been designed to make the voting process as simpler as possible the introduction of online