Scantegrity II: End-To-End Verifiability by Voters of Optical Scan Elections Through Confirmation Codes David Chaum, Richard T
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 4, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2009 611 Scantegrity II: End-to-End Verifiability by Voters of Optical Scan Elections Through Confirmation Codes David Chaum, Richard T. Carback, Jeremy Clark, Aleksander Essex, Stefan Popoveniuc, Ronald L. Rivest, Peter Y. A. Ryan, Emily Shen, Alan T. Sherman, and Poorvi L. Vora Abstract—Scantegrity II is an enhancement for existing paper (DRE) voting machines began to replace paper ballots and ballot systems. It allows voters to verify election integrity—from lever systems in about 1980 [2]. More recently, however, their selections on the ballot all the way to the final tally—by due to reliability failures and security vulnerabilities, the noting codes and checking for them online. Voters mark Scant- egrity II ballots just as with conventional optical scan, but using trend has been toward replacing DREs with paper ballot a special ballot marking pen. Marking a selection with this pen systems, including optical scan systems [30]. Optical scan, makes legible an otherwise invisible preprinted confirmation however, is not without its own demonstrated and inherent code. Confirmation codes are independent and random for each integrity vulnerabilities (see, for example, [29]). Undetected potential selection on each ballot. To verify that their individual errors, unintentional or malicious, in the scanning or tallying votes are recorded correctly, voters can look up their ballot serial numbers online and verify that their confirmation codes are posted software can cause undetected errors in the electronic tally. correctly. The confirmation codes do not allow voters to prove how Improperly printed ballots enable a variety of attacks on they voted. However, the confirmation codes constitute convincing integrity. Misplaced ballots or breaches in chain-of-custody evidence of error or malfeasance in the event that incorrect codes render even expensive manual recounts ineffective. Further, are posted online. Correctness of the final tally with respect to the transparency offered by manual recounts is at best limited the published codes is proven by election officials in a manner that can be verified by any interested party. Thus, compromise to those officials and observers in attendance. Scantegrity of either ballot chain of custody or the software systems cannot II is an enhancement for optical scan voting systems that undetectably affect election integrity. Scantegrity II has been addresses the above deficiencies, while also providing ballot implemented and tested in small elections in which ballots were secrecy guarantees under reasonable assumptions. scanned either at the polling place or centrally. Preparations for In Scantegrity II, voters mark ballots using a special its use in a public sector election have commenced. ballot-marking pen, which makes legible preprinted confirma- Index Terms—Cryptography, electronic voting, end-to-end veri- tion codes corresponding to voter selections. The link between fiability, privacy. confirmation codes and voter selections is cryptographically I. INTRODUCTION protected, with the key(s) being shared by election officials. Voters may note down their confirmation codes onto a chit APER ballots dominate elections globally, apart from a that is detachable from the ballot. After the election, all voted P few exceptions such as Brazil and India. In the United confirmation codes are posted online, where voters may check States, optical scan systems and direct recording electronic them. The final tally is computed in a verifiable manner from Manuscript received February 23, 2009; revised October 07, 2009. First pub- the posted confirmation codes. lished October 20, 2009; current version published November 18, 2009. The work of J. Clark and A. Essex was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and The functionality of Scantegrity II is enabled by the use of Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). The work of S. Popoveniuc several types of ink with special properties, in the following and P. L. Vora was supported by NSF-CNS-0831149. The associate editor co- ways. ordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was 1) Confirmation codes and ballot ovals are printed with a spe- Dr. Bart Preneel. D. Chaum is with the Voting Systems Institute, Los Angeles, CA 90064 USA cial ink that darkens when it reacts with the ink in the (e-mail: [email protected]). ballot-marking pen; the confirmation code ink reacts more R. T. Carback and A. T. Sherman are with the Department of Com- slowly than the ballot oval ink, and hence darkens several puter Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Balti- more County, Baltimore, MD 21250 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; minutes after the oval does. Thus, the code is visible for [email protected]). several minutes after being marked, during which the voter J. Clark is with the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Univer- may note it on the chit. On the other hand, the confirma- sity of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada (e-mail: [email protected] tion code may be assumed to be indistinguishable from its terloo.ca). A. Essex is with the School of Information Technology and Engineering, Uni- background in an unmarked oval. This allows the Scant- versity of Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada (e-mail: [email protected]). egrity II system to provide a confirmation code to the voter S. Popoveniuc and P. L. Vora are with the National Institute of Standards only after the voter has made the corresponding ballot se- and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). lection. R. L. Rivest and E. Shen are with the Department of Electrical Engineering 2) The Scantegrity II chit bears two serial numbers that are and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA required of the voter in order to check the confirmation 02139 USA (e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected]). R. Y. A. Ryan is with the Faculte des Sciences, de la Techologie et de la Com- codes online. These serial numbers are also indistinguish- munication, University of Luxembourg, L-1359, Luxembourg (e-mail: peter. able from the background until made legible through the [email protected]). use of a decoding pen. The ink in the decoding pens is dif- Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. ferent from the ink in the ballot-marking pens. Poll workers Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIFS.2009.2034919 reveal the serial numbers using a decoding pen after the 1556-6013/$26.00 © 2009 IEEE 612 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INFORMATION FORENSICS AND SECURITY, VOL. 4, NO. 4, DECEMBER 2009 ballot is cast. This prevents voters from falsely claiming that information linking confirmation codes and ballot serial that a valid confirmation code, obtained from an uncast numbers to voter selections can be removed from ballots a few ballot, came from a cast ballot. When it is not possible to minutes after they are marked. As with regular optical scan, use the different inks required for chit serial numbers and forensic attacks are possible—coercive adversaries could, for decoder pens, it is possible to achieve a similar end, though example, use specialized equipment to attempt to read the codes with weaker integrity guarantees, by requiring that a record on the ballots. We assume these are too time-consuming and be kept, by polling officials and observers, of serial num- unwieldy to be very practical, for two reasons. First, we have bers of spoiled ballots. instituted printing procedures to minimize the effectiveness of Scantegrity II has implemented procedures for printing with the such ballot analyses; these are described in Section V. Second, inks to make it virtually impossible to read unexposed numbers simpler attacks, based on the fingerprinting of the underlying and codes with the human eye. Further, it is reasonable to as- paper using commodity scanners [12], are possible against sume that voters do not have access to ballots outside the polling perforated paper-ballot-based end-to-end voting systems in booth, and that they do not have access to specialized equipment general (including Scantegrity and Prêt à Voter). inside the polling booth. The inks thus enable the Scantegrity II voting system to provide voters with confirmation codes that A. Contributions correspond exactly to their selections, and serial numbers that Scantegrity II and its predecessor Scantegrity [9] have the fol- correspond exactly to valid cast ballots. lowing characteristics that distinguish them from other systems Scantegrity II, like several other systems (such as Prêt à Voter that provide end-to-end verifiability: [11], Punchscan [15], [16], [26], Scratch & Vote [1]) provides 1) Compatibility with optical scan equipment: Scantegrity a mechanism for end-to-end verifiability of election integrity: and Scantegrity II do not require the replacement of any voters may verify that their selections are included unmodified optical scan polling place equipment. Both systems in- in the collection of selections; additionally, anyone may verify terface cleanly with the underlying optical scan system, that the tally is computed correctly from the collection of selec- requiring only a modified ballot and access to the results tions. Votersand authorized observers may “audit” ballots by re- from the scanners. quiring the voting system to expose all confirmation codes and 2) Familiar ballot-marking procedure: The ballot-marking corresponding selections on the audited ballots, and checking procedure is very similar to that for a conventional optical that these correspond to those printed on the ballots. Audited scan ballot. Opting into verification of election integrity is ballots may not be used for voting. up to the individual voter. The verifiability property of Scantegrity II is independent of Two properties of Scantegrity II distinguish it from Scant- voting system software correctness and ballot chain-of-custody egrity. after ballots are cast.