Page 11 - Towards Trustworthy Elections New Directions in Electronic Voting by Ed Gerck (auth.), David Chaum, Markus Jakobsson, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Josh Benaloh, Miroslaw Kutylowski, Ben Adida ( (z-lib.org (1)

The Witness-Voting System
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Informal Description - The HS/WVS
A highly-simplified Witness-Voting System example is presented in Table 1. An
Election Operator (EO) manages the HS/WVS, which includes special elements
called witnesses and readers. For example, witnesses capture the ballot as seen
and cast by the voter, which are later tallied by readers. Witnesses and readers
are placed at least with triple redundancy, so that differences can be resolved
and no single failure could compromise error detection. Witnesses’ recordings
are inaccessible until the election ends. The EO has previously run a voter reg-
istration service (where the WVS can also be applied), which generated a list of
eligible voter authorizations to allow access to a ballot.
Table 1. A Highly-Simplified WVS (HS/WVS)

Voting
System The Election Operator (EO) sets up a precinct, where an empty
Setup ballot box is placed, with video cameras watching 24/7 and record-
ing every step of the voting process, as EO witnesses.
Independent
Verification Central to the WVS method, the EO invites each stakeholder
Setup to add their own witnesses. More Witnesses = Better Evidence.
Stakeholders can also add their own readers, e.g. in providing a
transparent error-detection and consensus process for tallying.
Election
All the witnesses are able to see and record that the ballot box is
Run
empty before it is sealed and the election starts. All as witnessed
at each step, anyone who comes to vote is verified for eligibility,
signs the voter list and receives a ballot, marks the ballot secretly,
and inserts the voted ballot into the ballot box. At the end of the
election, the ballot box is opened and the ballots, including all the
ballot images from the witnessed records, are used in a transparent
error-detection and consensus process to arrive at a high accuracy,
high reliability and trustworthy election tally.

The WVS design invites stakeholders to be part of the election setup.For ex-
ample, political parties may add their own witnesses and readers, that they can
trust and verify. This design consideration is critical to the trustworthiness of
the election’s outcome and assures transparency. Since transparency is in the
eyes of the beholder, we let all be satisfied with it by construction.
Stakeholders can make sure that each vote is counted as seen and cast, but the
secret ballot is not compromised. Various witness, provided by the EO and stake-
holders, anonymously record each ballot as seen and cast by voters (thereby
catching the expressed voter intent). Ballot information from each witness and
the ballot box is used by readers in an error-detection and consensus process to
transparently calculate the election tally where, to further protect voter privacy,
individual ballot choice patterns do not need to be disclosed.