Security in Electronic Voting Systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Security in Electronic Voting Systems - Essay Example Though electronic voting systems are highly efficient and accurate, security of the systems is of high concern. Security in electronic voting is core in the terms of confidentiality of voter information and prevention of malicious or accidental abuse of electronic voting (Liaw, p 110). Electronic voting systems must be efficiently designed to maintain high confidence levels and integrity in order to eliminate voter manipulation, and the manipulation of the electronic voting at large (Liaw, p 115). The electronic voting system should be capable of separating the data content from its presentation form to avoid replication of the web content. This is ensured by the use of modern technologies in the system design, such as the extensive markup language for the web representation of the data content and the extensive language transformation style sheets for the customization of the data presentation. Electronic Voting Security Requirements Confidentiality: The electronic system must be ap propriately designed to ensure the confidentiality of voters’ personal information. ... Authentication: The system must ensure that the voter is efficiently identified, as per the registration database, to be entitled to and allowed to vote. Appropriate identification documents may be required for clarification of voter identity (Bungale & Sridhar, p2). The voter must identify him/herself as per the system’s voter registry to be able to vote, and hence an elimination of fraudulent voting and manipulation of the electronic voting (Bungale & Sridhar, p2). Anonymity: On the other hand, the electronic voting system must also ensure that votes are not associated or identifiable with voter identity. The system should also be non-coercible, that is, voters should not be able to prove to others on how they voted. This eliminates vote selling and/or coercion (Bungale & Sridhar, p2). Verifiability: The electronic voting system should be able to efficiently verify voters for voting, after identification. Additionally, the system should also be able to verify the results to ensure accuracy, including the number of voters who participated and the total number of votes cast. The system should be reliable and robust to eliminate the loss of votes, despite any technical failures such as loss of network communication (Bungale & Sridhar, p2). Cryptographic Chimes of an Electronic Voting System The cryptographic voting protocols ensure and facilitate verifiable voting without fundamentally trusting any software in the voting system. However, cryptographic protocols may cause challenges to the voting system, such as denial of service, compromise on voter confidentiality and creation of subliminal channels in the encrypted ballot. In addition to analyzing the