Journal of Computer and Communications, 2014, 2, 97-100
Published Online January 2014 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/jcc)
http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/jcc.2014.22017
OPEN ACCESS JCC
Development of a General-Purpose E-Voting Server
De Su, Yuichi Goto, Jingde Cheng
Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan.
Email: sude@aise.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp; gotoh@aise.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp; cheng@aise.ics.saitama-u.ac.jp
Received November 2013
ABSTRACT
Voting is a general and indispensable method, and widely used to express a choice or preference, to elect a per-
son, or to choose an opinion by ballot in education, enterprise, medicine, and government. Until now, various
E-voting schem es are proposed in the world but they are different from each other. There is no system that can
provide users with E-votin g services anytime and anywhere such that one can use E-voting servers without even
thinking about them. Therefore, an E-voting system for general-purpose is demanded. To support any kinds of
vote, we divide voting system into components, and make different assembly of those components for different
kinds of voting.
KEYWORDS
Component; E-Voting
1. Introduction
Vote is a general and indispensable method and widely
used for a group to express a choice or preference, to
elect a person, or to choose an opinion by ballot in edu-
cation, enterprise, medicine, and government.
E-voting is an important application of cryptography
in which a variety of cryptographic technologies as the
theoretical basis, through the computer and the network
to complete the entire election process [2].
Until now, various E-voting schemes are proposed in
the word but they are different from each other. There is
no system that can provide users with E-voting services
anytime and anywhere such that one can use E-voting
servers without even thinking about them [6].
On the other hand, an E-voting system for general-
purpose can be developed; there are already many estab-
lished electronic voting schemes. We just need to analyze
existing electronic voting schemes, and divide voting
system into components, and make different assembly of
those components for different kinds of voting. After that
we can say we implemented a gener al-purpose voting
system.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section
2 presents the requirement of electronic voting. Section 3
presents an architecture of a general-purpose E-voting
server. Section 4 presents analyses of existing E-voting
schemes. Some concluding remarks are given in Section
5.
2. The Basic Requirements of Electronic
Voting
Generally speaking, a secure electronic voting scheme
should satisfy the following seven requirements:
Completeness that all legal votes should be the cor-
rect statistical.
The legitimacy that a malicious voter cannot disrupt
the elections.
Confidentiality of the contents of that vote is confi-
dential and cannot get the ballot papers by the voters
of information.
Cannot be repeated that any legal voter can only cast
one vote.
Has the legitimacy that only the right to vote polling
personnel are eligible to vote.
The fairness of that election results can not disclose
the middle.
Verifiable that voters can verify their votes are cor-
rectly included in the counting results.
3. The Architecture
To satisfy all the requirements, we indented to design
and implement a general-purpose E-voting server as a
persistent computing system [3] and a web application. A
persistent computing system is a system that functions
continuously anytime without stopping its reactions even
when it needs to be maintained, upgraded, or reconfi-
gured, or it is attacked. A web application is an informa-
Development of a General-Purpose E-Voting Server
OPEN ACCESS JCC
98
tion system that can be used anywhere easily via the web,
and can be used easily only a web browser.
Figure 1 shows the architecture of a general-purpose
E-voting server. All components with measuring, re-
cording, monitoring, controlling functions are connected
by several Soft System Buses (SSB) [4] with data/ins-
truction preserving functions. To easily maintain, upgra-
de, and reconfigure without stopping its services, the E-
voting server has several same components and databases.
In order to provide high security, we use three SSBs ra-
ther than only one SSB to connect components and data-
bases.
In addition, the component can get data only from ac-
cessible databases. Therefore, the E-voting server can be
maintained and reconfigured easily anytime and anywh-
ere without stopping its services and the E-voting server
can be implemented and managed in a style of informa-
tion hiding/protection such that any developer/adminis-
trator cannot get unauthorized information [8].
The E-vo ting server consists of four groups of com-
ponents, i.e., central control components group, user in-
terface group, database management group, and data
processing group.
Central Control Components (CCCs) group includes a
central measurer, a central recorder, a central monitor,
and a central controller/scheduler. Central control com-
ponents measure, record, monitor, and control other com-
ponents.
User interface group consists of Web page Generator
Components (WGCs) to generate web page data by inte-
ractions with this server’s users. By the component, users
can change messages from the E-voting server to lan-
guages they speak or desire.
Database management group consists of databases to
store and manage data. These databases are: Vote data-
bases (VOSs) to manage vote data, Answer Vote data-
bases (AVSs) to manage answer vote data, Administrator
databases (ADMs) to manage administrator data, Voter
databases (VORs) to manage voter data, Verifier data-
bases (VERs) to manage verifier data, Candidate data-
bases (CANs) to manage candidate data.
Data processing group consists of Vote Management
Components (VMCs) to deal with vote data, Verification
Components (VCs) to verify the vote, Cryptography
Management Components (CMCs) to encrypt vote data,
Vote Open Components (VOCs) to deal with answer
vote data, Account Management Components (AMCs) to
deal with user account data.
The components are controlled by central control
components. Central control components can make diffe-
rent assembly of those components for different kinds of
voting. If some new kinds of voting are proposed in the
world, we just need to add new components and make
new assembly for new kind of voting.
4. Analysis of Existing E-voting Schemes
We had analyzed 10 voting schemes about internet vot-
ing. A distinction between voting system, there are four
types below:
Blind signature scheme.
Mixnet scheme .
Homomorphic encryption scheme.
4.1. Blind Signature Scheme
Blind signature scheme, the voters will send their votes
Figure 1. The architecture of a general-purpose E-voting server.
Development of a General-Purpose E-Voting Server
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99
with the name of a trusted control center. Management
Center will not look at the contents of the votes with the
name, ownership may conduct a check of double voting,
signing back with a ticket if they pass the Administration
Center. Voters, the Center sent an anonymous aggregate
vote signed center aggregation to aggregate and verify
the signature [5].
To require anonymous communication channel, it can-
not be used without the normal communication channels
like the Internet. Configuration has the disadvantage of
increasing the instrument [7].
Blind signature of anonymity because the electronic
voting system constructed blind voters vote centre the
identity of a blind signature is an important application.
In 1992, Fujioka proposed a blind signature based voting
program, which the algorithm is easy to implement, low
network traffic, in the non-governmental sector has been
widely used. However, this solution in terms of safety
there are some shortcomings:
1) The lack of voter control. In this way, a malicious
voter may send a large number of anonymous votes, the
electoral process interference and damage.
2) Fails to effectively prevent the issuer's fraud. Since
the legitimacy of the voting phase of the signature en-
tirely by the issuer to verify, so people can forge a valid
visa votes if voters abstained, so he can be someone
else's vote.
3) No effective supervision of tellers, tellers failed to
prevent the intermediate results of the vote disclosure,
thus affecting the elections.
Currently, many papers and programs on the electronic
voting program Fujioka has been improved, but the safe-
ty and efficiency to varying degrees, still there are some
problems. This departure from the practicality and safety,
the use of blind signatures, put forward an electronic
election scheme, which can effectively address the issue.
Models of blind signature scheme have the following
five:
Sensus scheme.
EVS scheme.
SEAS scheme.
DynaVote scheme.
Receipt-free scheme.
The above model using the blind signature scheme can
effectively protect the privacy of voters.
4.2. Mixnet Scheme
I will not be able to vote by correspondence with the
content and the close vote in the first ciphertext by mak-
ing a mixnet that guarantees the anonymity of the vote.
This method, however, to increase the accuracy to
prevent unauthorized centers, it is necessary to increase
the number of centers and to increase the number of sys-
tem components, to achieve fairness and tallied after the
deadline for voting, aggregate you must have a problem
on the ballot may essentials.
Mixnet system model has the following three:
Clarke Tax scheme
Voter -Resolved scheme.
Model Mixnet-based scheme.
4.3. Homomorphic Encryption Scheme
Voters sent to administrators and the public key to en-
crypt the contents of the votes. Administrator to aggre-
gate the votes without looking at the contents of the table,
send their votes to the ballot and then aggregated. The
ballot will be announced at a private key to decrypt the
votes. But look whats on ballot for each vote. The ano-
nymity of the vote is guaranteed.
It puts only 1 or 0 in this method the contents of the
table is a small range of applications.
Homomorphic encryption scheme model has the fol-
lowing two:
Re-encryption scheme
Secret-ballot scheme
4.4. A Case Study of DynaVote
We make a case study to illustrate the feasibility of our
serv er . We choose DynaVote [9] as a target, because this
scheme is often discussed in the world. We make a table
to proof our components can achieve this scheme. How
our components can achieve DynaVote shows in Table 1.
DynaVote has the following actors: Voter, Ballot Ge-
nerator, Key Generator, Counter, and PVID Authority.
5. Concluding Remarks
An E-voting system for general-purpose can be developed.
Table 1. Components in dynaVote.
Process Component DynaVote
Prepare
Stage
AMC Voter registration
AMC Voter applies PVID authority
to obtain a PVID-list by using
his real registration identity.
VMC Voter obtain a secret key
Voting
Stage
VMC In voting stage voter obtains a
dynamic ballot and casts his
candidate selection with the PVID.
VC
Verifier verifies that the PVID
belongs to a registered voter who
has not yet voted. If the ballot is
valid, the verifier signs the ballot
and returns it to the voter.
VMC
The voter then sends the signed
ballot to the counter
Opening
Stage VOC The counter checks the signature
on the ballot, The counter then
add the ballot to the tally.
Development of a General-Purpose E-Voting Server
OPEN ACCESS JCC
100
There are already many established electronic voting
schemes. We just need to analyze existing electronic
voting schemes, and divide voting system into compo-
nents, and make different assembly of those components
for different kinds of voting. In this paper, we have pre-
sented a requirement analysis and architecture for a gen-
eral-purpose E-voting server.
Now we are developing a general-purpose E-voting
server based on ENQUETE-BAISE [1].
In this paper we only analyze some common voting
schemes, but we have not analyzed special voting sche-
mes. So in the future we will also analyze other special
voting schemes and add them into ENQUETE-BAISE
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