Elections are typically set up to follow certain electoral principles. Elections have to be conducted universally, equally, freely, directly and secretly. These electoral principles ensure that votes cannot be bought at an election and all voters can cast their vote democratically.
These principles and the secrecy of the ballot are also ensured when conducting an online election with POLYAS. Below you will learn how these electoral principles are translated into online voting.
Cryptographic techniques are used to enable the secrecy of the ballot in online voting. The prerequisite for the access to e-voting is an existing voting authorisation. In POLYAS CORE 2.5.0, the identity of an eligible voter is anonymized via token after logging in to the voting system. Only the confirmation that a voter has voted is available to be viewed – it is impossible to determine how a person voted.
Learn more about legally binding online vote casting!
The POLYAS CORE 2.5.0 voting system runs on physically and systemically separated voting systems. Hence, the electoral roll is separated from vote casting and the ballot box. This guranteees the secrecy and ensures that the electoral principles are adhered to.
In order to ensure voting secrecy, the completed ballot papers are encrypted on the voters’ devices and forwarded to the ballot box. The ballot papers are then cryptographically “shuffled”. This ensures that the identity of the voter cannot be inferred from the ballot paper. For the final result, the ballot papers are decrypted and counted in the ballot box.
The POLYAS CORE 3.0 voting system relies on the asymmetric encryption methods to protect the secrecy of the ballot. Thus, for each election with POLYAS CORE 3.0 a key pair is generated. This consists of a secret private key and a public key. The public key is used during the election to encrypt the ballots. Decryption of the ballots is only possible if the appropriate private key is used.
The identity of the eligible voters is anonymized while voting with POLYAS CORE 3.0 and is separated from the voting process. It is thus not possible to deduce the voters’ identity from the vote cast in the ballot box and the secrecy of the ballot is maintained.
To be able to provide you with the highest level of security for your online election, we are constantly searching for additional security measures.
The technical capabilities of all the POLYAS voting systems ensure the electoral principles and secrecy of the ballot are upheld.
In addition, the principle of universality is emphasised as online elections impose less obstacles to vote casting: online voting gives voters with disabilities the chance to cast their vote on their own and completely unassisted. Visually impaired voters cast their votes via screen readers in the online voting system. Moreover, patients in hospital can vote independently online. Online voting eliminates the time and effort involved in physically attending the polling station and leaves no opportunity for voting documents to be filled out incorrectly.
Breaking down barriers to participation leads to a higher voter turnout so that decisions made with online voting are not only legally binding, but also more forcefully reflect the will of the electorate.
Conduct a legally binding online election with POLYAS. Contact our voting experts!
