An electronic voting system supporting vote weights

Abstract

Purpose – This paper aims to provide a solution for allowing an arbitrary number of weights and weight values to be used in an electronic voting system. Design/methodology/approach – Robust Electronic Voting System (REVS) was chosen, a voting system designed to support internet voting processes, as the start point for studying the introduction of vote weights. Findings – The work resulted in an internet voting system supporting vote weights, based on REVS. Research limitations/implications – In the solution presented, there is still a problem regarding anonymity, for the case of a single voter with a particular weighted vote. This is a fundamental problem, since it also exists in paper-based elections. Practical implications – This version of REVS has the same properties as the original REVS, apart from the anonymity issue above. Apart from this the process of registering voters got more complicated, since now it includes an extra action for binding a weight. Originality/value – To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this modified version of REVS is the first electronic voting system supporting vote weights. Another novelty of this work is the modulus sharing optimization used for the RSA key pairs of each entity.