Constitutional Compliant Electronic Voting

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Johannes Buchmann; Professor Dr. Alexander Roßnagel; Professorin Dr. Melanie Volkamer
• Subject Area: Theoretical Computer Science
• Term: from 2010 to 2014
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 170530122

Since 1999, in Germany electronic voting machines are used for parliamentary elections. In particular for complex elections, an electronic support during the vote casting and tallying process is essential since manual counting is fault prone, time intensive and expensive. On March 3rd, 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court declared the used electronic voting machines and the corresponding Federal Voting Machine Ordinance as unconstitutional since they did not meet the principles of the electoral law. However, the court also emphasized that this is not in principle the case for electronic voting. Thus, the aim of this project is to examine how constitutional electronic voting systems and especially constitutional verification methods can be implemented. For this purpose, comprehensive legal and technical requirements are defined and suggestions for a new Federal Voting Machine Ordinance are made. Further, a constitutional voting system is realized which supports vote casting, vote counting and voter authentication and a corresponding concept for evaluation and certification is developed. In successful cooperation between legal researchers and computer scientists, during the first phase of the project requirements for electronic voting systems were/are derived from the verdict and appropriate electronic voting systems with plain text receipts and encrypted receipts were/are analyzed. In the initial funding period, an electronic voting system using plain text receipts will be finalized. In the second phase of the project, the overall project objectives will be achieved. A modified Federal Voting Machine Ordinance will be derived which bases on the legal and technical analysis. Further, an electronic voting system using encrypted receipts will be finalized by developing a corresponding frontend for the election setup and vote casting process which will also be included in the evaluation and certification concept. Subsequently, the electronic voting system develop in this project will be further elaborated in such a way that the voter can cast his or her vote in any polling station. Finally, prototypes of the developed voting systems will be implemented and the compliance with the evaluation concept will be analyzed.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants