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Legal
Aspects
1. How
will CyberVote check that someone has fulfilled his/her voting
obligations when he/she is part of a country where voting is a legal
duty (like in Greece for instance) ?
2. What
are the legal requirements for the integrity of voting schemes (both
electronic and traditional)?
What level of verifiability is required
for elections today: who can verify the course of the elections?
3. Will
the CyberVote system make itself a subject of a certification procedure
?
4. Who
are you co-operating with to cover all the legal, organisation, social
and cultural questions ?
5. Is
CyberVote a purely technical project ?
6. Will
CyberVote comply with legal requirements ?
7. How
CyberVote will ensure that someone is isolate when he/she votes ?
8. How
CyberVote will ensure that someone else is not forcing the voter to vote
in a specific way ?
9. How
CyberVote will protect voters against coercion?
10. Is
it true that an e-voting scheme not resistant to voter coercion cannot
be used legally in public elections?
11. How
CyberVote will ensure that someone is not selling his/her vote ?
12. Will
electronic voting need law modifications ?
13. What
will happen if my computer is broken on the election day ?
14. How
will you prevent election officials from changing the subject of the
vote after or during the election ?
See
also the frequently asked questions on :
Use
of mobile phones
Use
of the system
Security
and cryptology
Commercial
and marketing
How
will an electronic voting system check that someone has fulfilled his/her
voting obligations when he/she is part of a country where voting is
compulsory (like in Belgium or Greece for instance)?
The way in which this
function is achieved depends on architectural choices and on the
protocol used.
CyberVote will develop
a system which will be publicly (or universally) verifiable. Voters will
be able to check whether they (or someone else) have voted or not.
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What
are the legal requirements for the integrity of voting schemes (both
electronic and traditional)? What level of verifiability is required for
elections today: who can verify the course of the elections?
A traditional election
scheme generally provides verifiability of the election process on
diverse levels: verifiability directly by the voters themselves,
verifiability by the election officials and verifiability by independent
election experts and designated witnesses.
In traditional
elections, the ultimate way to check the integrity of the system is by
recounting the votes.
CyberVote will be able
to achieve the same result by introducing the public verifiability of
the elections: voters will be able to check whether they (or someone
else) have voted or not.
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Will
the CyberVote system make itself a subject of a certification procedure?
The main objective of
CyberVote is to develop a prototype, which will not immediately be
applicable as a product.
But CyberVote will be
using the best state of the art security and cryptography. Therefore, if
a CyberVote product would eventually be developed, this will be capable
of being subject to the most stringent certification procedures.
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Who
are you co-operating with to cover all the legal, organisation, social
and cultural questions? Is Cybervote a purely technical project?
CyberVote is not a
purely technical project but the partners in the project have expertise
in a wide range of domains: technical (Matra, TUE, KUL, NOKIA, BT),
legal (KUL – ICRI) and organisational (End-users: Issy, Kista and
Bremen).
CyberVote also has set
up a special interest user group (the CSIUG), which interest covers
purely technical to socio-cultural domains.
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Will
CyberVote comply with legal requirements?
Compliance with
existing election regulations will not to be entirely possible, since
election regulations today are basically based on traditional voting
procedures (voting with paper ballots at official polling stations).
CyberVote does however
intend to contribute to the influencing of the legislation process by
developing a high online voting standard by using the best state of the
art security and cryptography.
CyberVote has produced
an extensive report on the legal aspects of Internet voting.
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How
CyberVote will ensure that someone is isolated when he/she votes? How
CyberVote will ensure that someone else is not forcing the voter to vote
in a specific way? How CyberVote will protect voters against coercion?
This of course for a
mayor part depends on the accompanying circumstances in which the vote
is cast. Therefore, this is basically a question of how the CyberVote
system will actually be used.
CyberVote itself can
technically not ensure that a voter is isolated and therefore not
coerced. This can only be achieved by implementing legal requirements as
to the way in which the vote has to be cast. We remark that today the
illegitimate influencing of voters is not allowed either and punished
accordingly.
Finally, the situation
can be compared with the existing vote by mail and vote by proxy systems,
which provide no guarantees either as to the non-coercibility of the
voters.
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Is
it true that an e-voting scheme that is not resistant to voter coercion
cannot be used for legally binding public elections?
Although the
requirement of non-coercibility is a basic principle, this is not
strictly enforced in the existing election systems either. A lot of
countries allow the voting by mail and proxy voting. Although these
systems in principle do not fully comply with the non-coercibility
principle, they still are considered to be lawful.
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How
CyberVote will ensure that someone is not selling his/her vote?
CyberVote itself can
technically not ensure that a vote is not sold. This can only be done if
it is required the vote to be cast in private voting booths.
A lot of countries do
however allow the votes to be cast by mail and by proxy. These systems
do not ensure that votes are not sold either.
CyberVote does however
recognise the problem of large scale vote selling and intends to do more
research on this topic. This essentially remains an open research issue.
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Will
electronic voting need modifications of the law?
The report on legal
aspects of Internet voting has shown that the existing election
regulation needs to be modified. The regulations today are based on the
traditional voting systems that make use of paper ballots and official
polling stations.
Mainly the following
technical developments will require minor and/or major modifications of
existing election regulations: electronic authentication (at the polling
station or distantly), digital ballots, digital and online voter’s
registers, elimination of private voting booths (when remote online
voting), online transfer of digital ballots and electronic monitoring of
the election process.
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What
will happen if my computer is broken on the Election Day?
The ability to vote
will not be linked to a particular computer. The computer will only be
an alternative way of casting a vote. In the foreseeable future,
different alternatives will co-exist.
You can for example
still physically go to the official polling station. Or you can cast
your vote at a computer in another (public) place (like a library e.g.)
or especially erected emergency centres.
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How
do you assure that when votes have to be cast on multiple topics, a vote
actually corresponds with the correct topic? How will you prevent
election officials from changing the subject of the vote after or during
the election?
This question relates
to the possibility that the topics of an election and the corresponding
votes cast are swapped by e.g. election officials. This would result in
the votes being related to a wrong topic.
CyberVote will
authenticate the ballot and bind this ballot to a particular question.
Covering this by a
certain type of protocol seems to be the best way to exclude this kind
of misbehaviour.
See
also the frequently asked questions on :
Use
of mobile phones
Use
of the system
Security
and cryptology
Commercial
and marketing
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