Trust assumptions in voting systems

TL;DR

This paper compares various voting systems based on trust assumptions about involved parties, analyzing their security implications to facilitate better understanding and evaluation of their security levels.

Contribution

It introduces a framework for assessing trust assumptions across different voting systems, considering multiple parties and security goals, to enable systematic comparison.

Findings

Trust relations vary significantly among voting systems.

Certain trust assumptions are more critical for security.

The framework aids in identifying vulnerabilities related to trust.

Abstract

Assessing and comparing the security level of different voting systems is non-trivial as the technical means provided for and societal assumptions made about various systems differ significantly. However, trust assumptions concerning the involved parties are present for all voting systems and can be used as a basis for comparison. This paper discusses eight concrete voting systems with different properties, 12 types of parties involved, and seven general security goals set for voting. The emerging trust relations are assessed for their criticality, and the result is used for comparison of the considered systems.