...CHAPTER 2 FOREIGN LITERATURE “Electronic Voting Literature” Voting on the internet using PC's everyday offers only weak security, but its main disadvantages are in the areas of anonymity and protection against coercion and/or vote selling. The Presidential elections of 2000 brought national attention to problems with current American methods of casting and counting votes in public elections. Most people believe that the current system should be changed; there is much disagreement on how such changes should be made. Dr. Michael Shamos of CMU provides a sharp counterpoint [6] to Neumann and Mercuri's views. While his “Six Commandments” summary of requirements for a voting system is very similar to others' requirements, he's less afraid of the catastrophic failures and sweeping fraud made possible by imperfections in electronic voting machines actually occurring in a real election. Shamos is also much less impressed with paper ballots than are Neumann and Mercuri. He places a great deal of faith in decentralization to make fraud difficult to commit and easy to detect. Dr. Shamos even likes DRE machines. (We must take into account the fact that this paper was written ten years ago, long before the 2000 elections and before more modern mathematical results like Chaum's; some of Dr. Shamos' opinions may have changed since then. While Dr. Neumann's talk cited here is of similar age, his pessimism with regard to machines has had little reason for change.) Rebecca Mercuri invented...
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...Chapter 1 Introduction Problem and Background of the Study AMA Computer College Campus was founded last June 1999 with SEC. Reg. No. 183768 under the leadership of its President and founding Chairman of the Board, Mr. Amable Mendoza Aguiluz V, it variably offers 4 year degree courses: BS Computer Science, BS Computer Engineering, BS Information Technology, BS Accountancy and other technical courses. The core objective and desire of its founder is to enable the vast majority of the youth and masses to acquire international-level education at a very affordable local cost, thus acquiring available viable employment upon completion. Its graduates not limited to territorial constraints but possibly venture into foreign companies. Thus AMA Computer College was born into reality at Plaza Nova building, Santiago Boulevard General Santos City. The following are the school director after its first operation, Ms. Glenda Guirrero, Mr. Pareja, succeeded by Mr. Alcaraz, Mr. Lornito Beaniza and Presently Ms. Leah Y. Tolimao, AMA Computer College – Gensan campus has acquired a nationwide status on the Philippine archipelago. It strives to soon acquire Socsargen area under the leadership of school BS Information Technology, BS Computer Science, and BS Electronics and Communication Engineering. Computer Programming was implemented under Pangulong Gloria Scholarship Program. Software developer in Java and Micro.net will soon to be offered this school year 2009-2010. AMA Computer...
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...Original Question: What is the best way to manually count ballot papers in block vote (BV) systems? With first-past-the-post systems, one can easily pile the ballots for each candidate, and then tally the totals. Where there is more than one vote recorded on ballot papers, some kind of tallying system seems unavoidable. What techniques are used in counting block vote ballots elsewhere? Introduction “Vote counting is one of the most crucial stages in the election process. Failure to complete the count and transmit results in a quick, transparent and accurate manner can jeopardize public confidence in the elections and will directly affect whether candidates and political parties accept the final results.” (The ACE Encyclopedia) Block Voting (BV) belongs to the “family” of plurality / majority Electoral Systems (The other two big “families” being proportional, or mixed Electoral Systems) and is in fact a first-past-the-post (FPTP) system with the difference that it occurs in multi-member districts with voters having as many votes as there are positions to be filled. In a five-member constituency for example, the five candidates with the largest number of votes are elected, regardless of the actual percentage level of votes they receive. In BV systems, voters are usually free to vote for individual candidates regardless of party affiliation, but they are not entitled to cast the same vote more than once. Voters are also most often free to not use all the votes they are entitled...
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...Australia is one of the several countries which has implemented compulsory voting into its system. But it wasn’t until 1924 when it became mandatory for all eligible voters to enrol and vote in federal elections, due to a decline of elector turnout caused by the First World War. According to the Australian Electoral Commission, during the 1925 election, the first election with mandatory voting, the participation of voters was noticed to have increased to 91%. In spite of this, does more turnout increase legitimacy? Having mandatory voting will not only increase outliers but will also violate our freedom to choose and can lead to poor leadership. Therefore, Australia must bring about voluntary voting back into its system. We as Australians...
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...The Irish Electoral system of PR-STV is Fundamentally Flawed and should be replaced by the Single Member Plurality System In today’s environment of political apathy and scepticism it is particularly important that we scrutinise our political policies and procedures, so as to bolster a confidence of our countries governance in its people. Electoral systems are perhaps one of the most important aspects of the political process as they are the people’s main mechanism for having their voices heard. The main challenge for any political system is to strive to assist in creating a government that is an accurate representation of its citizen’s desires and future hopes for its political direction while ensuring stable governance. This essay will discuss the Irish electoral system of Proportionate Representation through the Single Transferable Vote (PRSTV) and whether a Single Member Plurality (SMP) system is a viable and worthwhile alternative. By first giving a brief history of the Irish electoral system as well as an explanation of how both systems operate. Then laying out some of these electoral systems advantages as well as disadvantages. Dáil Éireann and its members, Teachtai Dála (TDs) have been elected by the PRSTV electoral system since Irish independence in 1922. There are two main reasons for this. In the early 1900s a period in which Ireland was going through great political change PRSTV had historical support by the nationalist movement, which had the biggest political...
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...There are certain things about voting by mail we know to be true. Voting by mail is safe; voting by mail is fair; and voting by mail is cost efficient. We can look to the states currently using a universal vote by mail system as proof of these claims. Let’s start with the statistics. Oregon’s Secretary of State reported there were two cases of voter fraud in 2016; neither required prosecution. (Source: kobi5.com/news). Washington’s Secretary of State said there was no evidence of voter fraud anywhere in the state during the 2016 general election; (Source: www.washingtontimes.com); and in Colorado there were 32 voting offenses recorded from 2012 to 2016, but only four resulted in convictions. In terms of execution every state using a vote by mail system requires ballots to be sealed inside a series of security envelopes with a signature on the outside-most envelope. Upon receipt, trained officials verify the signature to confirm the sender is in fact who they say they are, and that they are a registered voter. Only after successful authentication is the enclosed ballot electronically tabulated. This maintains voters’ confidentiality....
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...Electronic Voting System TADAYOSHI KOHNO∗ A DAM S TUBBLEFIELD† DAN S. WALLACH§ February 27, 2004 AVIEL D. RUBIN‡ Abstract With significant U.S. federal funds now available to replace outdated punch-card and mechanical voting systems, municipalities and states throughout the U.S. are adopting paperless electronic voting systems from a number of different vendors. We present a security analysis of the source code to one such machine used in a significant share of the market. Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts. We identify several problems including unauthorized privilege escalation, incorrect use of cryptography, vulnerabilities to network threats, and poor software development processes. We show that voters, without any insider privileges, can cast unlimited votes without being detected by any mechanisms within the voting terminal software. Furthermore, we show that even the most serious of our outsider attacks could have been discovered and executed without access to the source code. In the face of such attacks, the usual worries about insider threats are not the only concerns; outsiders can do the damage. That said, we demonstrate that the insider threat is also quite considerable, showing that not only can an insider, such as a poll worker, modify the votes, but that insiders can also violate voter privacy and match votes with the voters who cast them. We conclude that this voting system...
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...Philippines is conducting elections for the Computer Wizard Society (CWS) officers every year. Paper-based voting system is currently used in electing officers for the CWS elections, which is laborious, time consuming and is unsecured in terms of the accuracy of the election results. The effectiveness of e-voting system compared to the manual voting before, the CWS advisers will encode the names of the candidates with a circle before it, which will be shaded by the voters in a piece of small paper. These papers will be the voting paraphernalia that will be distributed in each classroom of the CCS students by the CCS faculty members. After the election, all the distributed paper ballots will be collected by the CCS faculty members and they will tally the number of votes gained by the candidates through manual counting and after that, the results will be given to the CWS Adviser who will then announce the newly elected officers. In order to resolve these situations, the technology of electronic voting (e-voting) comes into existence. By using information technology, e-voting system can cast and count votes with higher convenience and efficiency, even make the electoral procedures simple and reduce the mistake rate of ballot examination. The studies show that there are lots of advantages through the use of e-voting system. Some of its advantages are; it is faster and convenient to use, e-voting has higher security. It also lessens human error and produces accurate election results. Company...
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...Discuss the advantages for replacing the current system for electing MPs with another one. There are two main types of electoral systems in the UK. They are First Past the Post (FPTP) and Proportional Representation (PR) First Past the Post is the voting system used to elect MPs to 'seats' in Parliament. In this system 'winner takes all' and the system also usually gives a clear majority both in a constituency or at national level. This means that a candidate in a constituency only needs one more vote than the nearest rival to win the seat. This is similar to political parties in general elections as they only need to win one more seat in the House of Commons to have a majority. The advantages of using FTPT is there is very little chance of extremist parties being elected to Parliament under because they are unlikely to gain enough votes to come into power in any one constituency. Also, generally the results of elections using FPTP can be calculated quickly. So, this makes it easier to transfer power to another party if it becomes necessary. One of the main criticisms of FPTP is that the number of votes for a party in general elections is not accurately shown in the number of seats won. An example of this could be the 1997 election when the Conservatives gained 18% of the vote in Scotland but not one but didn’t win a seat. This is can be seen at constituency level, where the winning candidate may have only received one third of the votes cast. So, a government could be elected...
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...Although one candidate can amass an enormous amount of popular votes, the current system does not allow the most popular candidate a victory. Just look at four other elections where a president has won the Electoral College but lost the popular vote: In 1824, John Quincy Adams was elected president despite not winning either the popular vote or the electoral vote. Andrew Jackson was the winner in both categories. Jackson received 38,000 more popular votes than Adams receive, and beat him in the electoral vote 99 to 84. Despite his victories, Jackson did not reach the majority 131 votes needed in the Electoral College to become president. In fact, neither candidate did. The decision went to the House of Representatives, which voted Adams into the White...
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...It also avoids runoff elections in which no candidate receives a true majority vote. Every American voter wholeheartedly believes that who they are voting for is the better candidate. Citizens become thankful for the system when their candidate receives less of the popular vote but wins 270 or more electoral college votes. However, when the tables turn and their candidate wins the popular vote yet loses the election they begin to wonder whether or not this is the election system we want. This structure was created by the founding fathers who at the time did not trust the citizens to make an educated choice for their leader (McClenaghan). The United States is supposed to be a nation “run by the people and for the people” just as Abraham Lincoln stated in his Gettysburg Address, however, without a direct democracy how can we be run by the people? If we truly want a country as Lincoln described, we must switch the current election process from a representative democracy over to a direct democracy (McClenaghan)...
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...Applying MESE processes to Improve Online E-Voting Prototype System with Paillier Threshold Cryptosystem Web Services Version 1.00 A project submitted to the Faculty of Graduate School, University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Engineering in Software Engineering Department of Computer Science Prepared by Hakan Evecek CS701 Dr. Chow Spring 2007 This project for the Masters of Engineering in Software Engineer degree by Hakan Evecek has been approved for the Department of Computer Science By _______________________________________________________ Dr. C. Edward Chow, Chair _______________________________________________________ Dr. Richard Weiner _______________________________________________________ Dr. Xiaobo Zhou Date Table of Contents Online E-Voting System Project Documentation 4 Abstract 6 1. Introduction 7 2. E-Voting System Related Literature 9 2.1. Public Key Cryptography 9 2.2. Homomorphic Encryption 10 2.3. Zero Knowledge Proofs 10 2.4. Threshold Cryptography 10 2.5. Cryptographic Voting Protocol 11 2.6. Issues in secure e-voting system 12 2.7. Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) 13 2.8. Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT) 14 3. Online E-Voting System Project Description 17 3.1. Paillier Threshold...
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...To what extent do different electoral systems produce different outcomes? In this essay I will assess the outcomes of Additional Member system, First Past the Post system and the Closed Party List system. The F-P-T-P system is used to elect the members of House of Commons and local government in England and Wales. Voters select candidates, and do so by marking his or her name with an ‘X’ on the ballot paper. This reflects the principle of ‘one person, one vote’. The Additional Members system is used in Scottish parliament, Welsh assembly, and Northern Ireland Assembly and Greater London assembly. It is a mixed system made up of F-P-T-P and party-list elements. The Regional party list (or the closed party list) is used to elect the European Parliament. There are number of large multimember constituencies. Political parties compile lists of candidates to place before the electorate, in descending order of preference. Electors vote for parties not for candidates, parties are allocated seats in direct proportion to the votes they gain in each regional constituency. In this essay I will argue that electoral systems produce different outcomes. One of the ways in which first-past-the-post voting system produces different outcomes to other parties is that it leads to no clear correlation between number of vote’s casts and seats won. For example in 2005 general election Labour received 40.7% of the votes but won 413 seats and also during the 2010 general elections Conservatives won...
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...to vote for is now essentially a rational exercise.’ Discuss. (25 marks) 4) Explain the term wasted votes used in the extract. (5 marks) 5) Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, consider why the first-past-the-post system disadvantages some parties. (10 marks) 6) ‘The use of referendums in the UK since 1997 has done little to strengthen democracy.’ Discuss. (25 marks) 7) Explain the term party conference used in the extract. (5 marks) 8) Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, outline the ways in which the Conservative Party and the Labour Party select their leaders. (10 marks) 9) ‘The main UK parties differ on economic policy alone.’ Discuss. (25 marks) 10) Explain the term cause groups used in the extract. (5 marks) 11) Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, consider why direct action could be said to undermine UK democracy. (10 marks) 12) ‘The most successful UK pressure groups still tend to focus on lobbying the Westminster Parliament, despite the availability of numerous other access points.’ Discuss. (25 marks) January 2012 13) Explain the term class dealignment used in the extract. (5 marks) 14) Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, consider the link between social class and voting behaviour. (10 marks) 15) ‘Low levels of turnout at recent general elections to the Westminster Parliament result from political apathy alone.’ Discuss. (25 marks) 16) Explain the term threshold as used in the extract. (5 marks)...
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...History of Voting | * Although we live in a democracy and have the right to vote, this is not always reflected in the turnout at elections. In the past people fought and protested to gain this right and your vote is the most direct way available to you to influence the way in which your country and your local council is run. * Voting in local elections decides who serves on the council and who controls it, as elected members are responsible for both the budget and the provision of services. * In early times two knights from each shire or county were elected by members of the local county courts to be sent to the Commons. In later years they were joined in the Commons by two representatives from each borough or town. * By 1430 only owners of freehold land generating an income of over forty shillings a year were eligible to vote in county elections. In the boroughs, qualification varied from each male head of household to those paying local taxes or to those who possessed property. * In 1800 you had to meet two criteria to be able to vote – you had to be male and you had to be wealthy. This meant that less than 3% of the adult population was eligible to vote. * Thankfully things have changed significantly since then and there have been some major changes to the regulations which govern our right to vote. * The 1832 Reform Act extended the right to vote to include certain leaseholders and householders. This gave 5% of adults a vote. * The 1867 Second Reform...
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