A fair and robust voting system by broadcast

Abstract

Hao, Ryan, and Zieliński (2010) propose a two-round decentralized voting protocol that is efficient in terms of rounds, computation, and bandwidth. However, the protocol has two drawbacks. First, if some voters abort then the election result cannot be announced, that is, the protocol is not robust. Secondly, the last voter can learn the election result before voting, that is, the protocol is not fair. Both drawbacks are typical of other decentralized e-voting protocols. This paper proposes a recovery round to enable the election result to be announced if voters abort, and we add a commitment round to ensure fairness. In addition, we provide a computational security proof of ballot secrecy.