FAQ

The following are a small collection of Frequently Asked Questions. We will be adding to these over the course of the project. If you have a question that is not answered here, please get in contact with us.

• I can buy goods over the internet, so why can't I vote over the internet?

• What's wrong with the current paper based system?

• Who's paying for this?

• I don't trust computers, so I don't want to use them to vote?

• I can buy goods over the internet, so why can't I vote over the internet?

• Actually, you can vote over the internet but it's not very widespread yet - probably the most advanced nation in this regard is Estonia. There are lots of layers of security on the systems in use at the moment.

  One of the key differences between purchasing goods and voting is that your purchase is not secret, whereas the principle of the secret ballot means that no-one should be able to find out how you voted. However, this means that if a voting system was rigged by an insider, or hacked by an outsider, it would be difficult for voters to spot. Even if a voter suspected something was not right, it would be difficult for them to get evidence. Contrast this with receiving a credit-card bill every month and being able to check your purchases. Would you be so satisfied with a credit-card company that just gave you a final total each month, without providing a breakdown? It's being able to check the transactions that leads to people's confidence in the system. It's not just that the system works, public trust also comes from the fact that it can be checked. In the same way, an online voting system that is electing politicians needs to have public trust and confidence in the system.

• What's wrong with the current paper based system?

• There is nothing wrong, per se, with the current system. However, it is inefficient and costly due to relying on people to count the votes. Humans make mistakes and as such there is always a degree of human error in the counting process. This error rarely has any impact, but in recent elections we have seen results where the majority is only 37 (BBC News Article - well within the realms of human error.

  Voters are also unable to verify the election result. They must relay on observers and an inherent trust of the election authorities. Whilst this is currently ok in the UK, it might not be in the future. Elections are too important to be based solely on trust. Trustworthy Electronic Voting is just an evolutionary step forward that will provide end-to-end verifiability, allowing the voter themselves to audit and verify that the election has been run correctly.

• Who's paying for this?

• There are two research projects currently working on Pret a Voter. The first is the EPSRC (Engineering and Phyical Sciences Research Council) Trustworthy Voting Systems Project, which is a joint project between the University of Surrey and the University of Birmingham. We are also collaborating with the SeRTVS Project, headed up by Prof. Peter Ryan in Luxembourg. Prof. Ryan is one of the original inventors of Pret a Voter, work he carried out when at the University of Newcastle. We are also collaborating with Douglas Wikström from the School of Computer Science and Communication of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, who is heading up the implementation of a secure Mix Net.

• I don't trust computers, so I don't want to use them to vote?

• Don't worry, neither do we. One of our core principles is that we don't trust any single computer. We also don't trust any single organisation. The design of the system allows you to submit your vote without a computer learning who it is for. This not only protects your privacy, but also makes it harder for the computer to cheat. Your vote is encrypted and cannot be read by any single computer. Once your vote has been submitted it is securely mixed, by different organisations, in a way that can be mathematically checked for correctness. This further protects your privacy. Once that is complete the votes are decrypted in a threshold manner. What this means is that a minimum number of parties must all agree to decrypt the vote, using their share of the key. No one party can decrypt and reveal your vote.

  We are naturally pessimistic people, when designing the system we assume people will try and cheat. The system is designed to ensure that any cheating is detected and your privacy (the secrecy of your vote) is protected.