In this paper we discuss on the general level the issue of trust the voters put in the secret voting system used in political elections. We promote the point of view that the voters’ recognition and acceptance of a particular voting system should be based not on trust, but on knowledge—on the knowledge of what is really happening during the voting, not presumed. The starting point of knowledge is mistrust. We formulate a postulate of mistrust (of an election commission) and keeping it in mind look closely at several deployed voting systems including the Estonian one. We find all of them unacceptable. Then we formulate three criteria for an Internet voting system to be acceptable to the voters (civil society). These are (1) openness, (2) acceptance of the system by an uncertain and broad set of qualified examiners and (3) a verifiable access of unsophisticated voters to the voter’s software approved by the aforementioned set of examiners. Finally, we explain only the modest role of the official (government) certification of the voting system in its recognition by the voters (civil society).

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationComputational Science and Its Applications – ICCSA 2019 - 19th International Conference, 2019, Proceedings
EditorsSanjay Misra, Osvaldo Gervasi, Beniamino Murgante, Elena Stankova, Vladimir Korkhov, Carmelo Torre, Eufemia Tarantino, Ana Maria A.C. Rocha, David Taniar, Bernady O. Apduhan
Pages577-586
Number of pages10
DOIs
StatePublished - 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11620 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

    Scopus subject areas

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • Computer Science(all)

    Research areas

  • Civil society, Estonian Internet voting system, Internet voting, Mistrust, Secret voting

ID: 49389710