A Framework for I-Voting based on Helios and PublicKey Certificates

Abstract

With the development of technology, so-called electronic voting has emerged. Of particular interest to us is Internet voting (Ivoting) because this method contributes to raising the percentage of voters as they can vote from anywhere and from any device, thus providing them with comfort. Indeed, the speed of counting is quick and results can be announced within a short period of time. Many voting systems have appeared in recent years but the most famous was Helios because it is open source, online available, and anyone can use it to create elections. It is a powerful and reliable system and has many features but also contains some limitations such as it is used in low coercion elections only. In this paper, a general framework for I-voting based on the Helios voting system and public key certificates is proposed. In this framework, Helios is suggested to be linked with a certification authority to provide the necessary keys for digital signature and vote encryption. Furthermore, each voter is suggested to have the possibility to have more than one voting account, one of which is a real voting account. The others are fake accounts that might be used by the voter in case of coercion. If a voter uses the fake account to vote, her/his vote will not be counted in the final votes. We also improve the Helios interface by simplifying it, adding more explanation to each step used in voting, and adding an Arabic interface so that Arab people can use the system more easily