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On October 13-14, NIST sponsored an End-to-End Voting System Workshop designed to bring together researchers in cryptography, security, and usability and election practitioners including election officials and voting system manufacturers to explore the security and usability properties of this type of innovative voting system.


Keynote talks described the fundamental notation of end-to-end voting systems and a State and election official’s perspective on innovative voting systems. A tutorial on how end-to-end voting systems work provided a common background for the workshop participants. A proposal of the desired properties for end-to-end voting systems was presented to provide context for the topics of the workshop to be explored. Five panels discussed a wide range of topics that impact end-to-end voting systems including usability, security, desired properties, and tradeoffs between different types of implementations. The final panel explored what the next steps should be to advance end-to-end voting systems including needed research, pilots, and standardization. Four referred papers were accepted that described experiences with end-to-end voting systems used for elections and novel implementations of end-to-end voting systems.

The two-day workshop was held at The George Washington University and attended by over 60 participants from the US, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Australia, Poland, and the UK.

The goal of this workshop is to understand the security and usability properties of end-to-end voting systems, one type of next-generation system of interest. The last few years have witnessed the emergence of end-to-end voting systems, which enable voter-verification of election outcome. Several proposed systems have been prototyped; some have been used in binding elections. As such, these systems demonstrate considerable promise. NIST is interested in understanding the properties of this class of systems: in particular, what kind of auditability, vote secrecy, and incoercibility properties do these systems possess? What are their security assumptions? How usable are these systems, by poll workers and by voters? How interested are voters and election officials in the properties provided by these systems? Can the strong auditability properties of current paper-based E2E systems be obtained without the use of paper? What would electronic end-to-end voting systems look like?

This workshop aims to (a) begin a discussion on the above issues, among experts in diverse fields, such as cryptography, security and usability, and (b) encourage research on the development of electronic end-to-end voting systems with an emphasis on usability. Workshop discussions could influence future standards.

Two types of submissions are sought:

  • Position papers (length about 2 pages). Topics of interest include (but are not limited to) the following:
    • Definitions of: end-to-end voting systems and their properties, such as usability, auditability, vote secrecy, and incoercibility. Relative importance of the properties. Extent to which the properties are achieved.
    • Impact of usability and accessibility on the security model
    • Impact of the security model on usability and accessibility
    • Electronic end-to-end voting systems: Are certain types of properties difficult to obtain in an electronic end-to-end voting system? Is it worth trying to build electronic end-to-end voting systems?
    • Reports of experiences with the use of end-to-end voting systems
  • Papers describing an electronic end-to-end voting system (These are expected to be more detailed than position papers; length about 5-15 pages).

Authors may submit papers that have been presented or published elsewhere. Accepted papers will be made available on the web as well as in printed form to workshop attendees. Manuscripts will not be formally published.

Workshop Program 

Tuesday, October 13, 2009
8:00 am

Registration Opens

9:00 am - 9:15 am

Welcoming Remarks

9:15 am - 10:00 am Keynote: Perspectives on End-to-End Voting Systems [presentation]
Ron Rivest, MIT
10:00 am - 11:00 am A Tutorial on Verifiable Voting: How it Works and Why it's so Important [presentation]
Josh Benaloh, Microsoft
11:00 am - 11:15 am Break
11:15 am - 12:00 pm E2E Voting Systems in the Context of Desirable Properties of Voting Systems [presentation]
Poorvi Vora, NIST/The George Washington University
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm Lunch
1:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Panel: Usability of E2E Voting Systems
Moderator: Lana Lowry, NIST

Panelists
Ginny Redish, Redish and Associates [presentation]
Lynn Baumeister, Cirque Interactive, LLC [presentation]
Dianne Golden, Association of Assistive Technology Act Programs (ATAP)

2:30 pm - 3:15 pm

Technical Session: Case Studies

Electing a University President using Open-Audit Voting: Analysis of real-world use of Helios [presentation | paper]
Ben Adida, Harvard University
Olivier de Marneffe, Universite catholique de Louvain
Olivier Pereira, Universite catholique de Louvain
Jean-Jacques Quisquater, Universite catholique de Louvain

Scantegrity Mock Election at Takoma Park [presentation | paper]
Alan T. Sherman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Richard Carback, Cyber Defense Lab, UMBC
David Chaum, Voting Systems Institute (VSI)
Jeremy Clark, University of Waterloo
John Conway, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Aleksander Essex, University of Ottawa
Paul S. Herrnson, University of Maryland, College Park
Travis Mayberry, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Stefan Popoveniuc, The George Washington University
Ronald L. Rivest, MIT
Anne Sergeant, Takoma Park Board of Elections
Emily Shen, MIT
Bimal Sinha, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Poorvi Vora, The George Washington University

3:15 pm - 3:30 pm Break
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm

Panel: E2E Voting Systems and Security
Moderator: Andrew Regenscheid, NIST

Panelists
Dan Wallach, Rice [paper]
Alan Sherman, University of Maryland, Baltimore County/ Russell Fink, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory and UMBC Cyber Defense Lab [presentation | paper]
David Chaum, Voting Systems Institute (VSI)
John Kelsey, NIST
[presentation]

5:00 pm Adjourn

 

Wednesday, October 14, 2009
8:30 am Registration Opens
9:00 am - 9:45 am Keynote: End-to-End Voting Systems- A State Perspective [presentation | paper]
Stephen Berger, State of North Carolina
9:45 am - 11:00 am

Panel: E2E Voting Systems-Desirable Properties and Definitions
Moderator: John Wack , NIST

Panelists
Doug Jones, University of Iowa [presentation | paper]
Lillie Coney, EPIC [presentation]
Melanie Volkamer, Center for Advanced Security Research Darmstadt [presentation | paper]
Dana Chisnell, Usability Works [presentation]

11:00 am - 11:15 am Break
11:15 am - 12:15 pm

Technical Session: Novel E2E Voting Schemes

Scratch, Click & Vote: E2E voting over the Internet [presentation | paper]
Miroslaw Kutylowski, Wroclaw University of Technology
Filip Zagórski, Wroclaw University of Technology

eTegrity and ePunchScan [presentation | paper]
David Chaum, Voting Systems Institute (VSI)
Stefan Popoveniuc, The George Washington University
Poorvi Vora, The George Washington University

12:15 pm - 1:45 pm

Lunch

1:45 pm - 3:00 pm Panel: Tradeoffs in Electronic E2E Voting Systems
Moderator: Rene Peralta, NIST

Panelists
Jeremy Epstein, SRI [presentation | paper]
Juan Gilbert, Clemson [presentation]
Josh Benaloh, Microsoft
Alex Halderman, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

3:00 pm - 3:15 pm Break
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm Panel: Next Steps for E2E Voting Systems
Moderator: Bill Burr, NIST


Panelists
David Chaum, Voting Systems Institute (VSI)
Ron Rivest, MIT
Doug Jones, University of Iowa
[presentation]
Anne Sergeant, Board of Elections, Takoma Park [presentation]
Jeremy Epstein, SRI [presentation]

4:45 pm - 5:00 pm

Concluding Remarks

Event Details

Starts: October 13, 2009 - 09:00 AM EDT
Ends: October 14, 2009 - 05:00 PM EDT

Format: In-person Type: Workshop

Agenda

Attendance Type: Open to public
Audience Type: Industry,Government,Academia


Location

The George Washington University 
Washington, DC

Created January 31, 2017, Updated June 22, 2020