RemoteVote and SAFE Vote: Towards Usable End-to-End Verification for Vote-by-Mail

TL;DR

This paper introduces RemoteVote and SAFE Vote, two new systems enabling end-to-end verifiable mail-in voting that maintain usability for voters not participating in verification, addressing limitations of previous frameworks like STROBE.

Contribution

It presents two novel approaches for E2E verification in vote-by-mail, expanding usability and verifiability considerations beyond prior frameworks like STROBE.

Findings

RemoteVote and SAFE Vote improve usability for mail-in voters.

The systems enable verifiable mail-in voting without altering voter experience.

Evaluation shows these approaches meet key properties of usability and verifiability.

Abstract

Postal voting is growing rapidly in the U.S., with 43% of voters casting ballots by mail in 2020, yet until recently there has been little research about extending the protections of end-to-end verifiable (E2E-V) election schemes to vote-by-mail contexts. The first - and to date, only - framework to focus on this setting is STROBE, which has important usability limitations. In this work, we present two approaches, RemoteVote and SAFE Vote, that allow mail-in voters to benefit from E2E-V without changing the voter experience for those who choose not to participate in verification. To evaluate these systems and compare them with STROBE, we consider an expansive set of properties, including novel attributes of usability and verifiability, several of which have applicability beyond vote-by-mail contexts. We hope that our work will help catalyze further progress towards universal applicability of E2E-V for real-world elections.