Random-Sample Voting

Introduction

Random-sample voting can be used locally, nationally, regionally, or even globally, with results that are more irrefutable than with current elections but at less than one-thousandth of the cost.

As a new member of the democracy toolbox, such voting holds great promise, for instance making practical today: Petitions of government that prove majority support. Binding consultations of constituencies by officials or parties. Ladder competitions that elect the most important and clearly stated issues to be put to vote. Juries for public policy issues with unprecedented resistance to manipulation. Even, in the extreme, full Athenian-style direct democracy, practical at the scale and complexity of society today.

Voters may be better motivated and informed since each vote carries more weight and each voter can meaning-fully investigate and study the single issue that voter is asked to help decide. Voter confidence in the increased integrity of the election process may also enhance participation. Anyone can verify online that neither randomness of voter selection nor integrity of outcome can have been manipulated, even by governments.

The ballots are sent voters by paper mail and voted online, but vote buying is made ineffective by a novel technique. The system has been implemented using multiple servers, however, those that are online or with persistent state do not have keys sufficient to impact privacy or integrity of elections.

Team

Deborah Hurley David Chaum Alan Sherman Jeremy Clark Neal McBurnett Lirong Xia Chris Vatcher Aggelos Kiayias Douglas Wikström Bingsheng Zhang Nan Yang David Parkes Hannu Nurmi Filip Zagorski Pance Ribarski Nicolas Blanchard Pedro Rezende Markus Dürmuth

 

White Paper

 

Read the White Paper

RSV Pillars

Thwarting Vote-Buying

Thwarting Vote-Selling

indistinguishable decoy ballots, w/ game theory & economic modeling

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Auditable Roster

Auditable Roster

prove cardinality of intersections w/o showing names

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VerifiableRandomness

Random beacon

Extracts bits from stock market closings (determines which bits to open)

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Statistics

Statistics

Bayesian priors collapse to closed form

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RSE

Cryptographic protocols

UC framework—proof of security

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Implementation

Secure Implementation

Feature: the online sever can identify invalid vote codes, but does not know valid vote codes and thus cannot stuff the ballot box

Real World Cryptography 2016 Demo

Real World Cryptography 2016 Demo -- click to vote

Vote Vote

 

Technical summaries

 

RSV Implementation Technical Report, by Bingsheng Zhang

Thwarting Vote Selling, by David C. Parkes, Paul Tylkin, Lirong Xia

Published Encrypted Rosters: Technical Summary, by David Chaum, Jeremy Clark, Neal McBurnett, Nan Yang

Verifable Randomness Pillar Technical Summary, Author: Christopher Vatcher; Editors: Alan Sherman and Aggelos Kiayias

Random Sample Voting: Security Proof, Editors: David Chaum, Aggelos Kiayias, Douglas Wikström, Bingsheng Zhang Summary: Jeremy Clark

Contact

info at rsvoting.org