The Security and the Credibility Challenges in e-Voting Systems

Abstract

E-voting is one of the most emerging social innovations of the 21st century which is being adopted by many countries since it represents the peak of e-government solutions and also enables an easier way to vote for their citizens and expatriates. In addition e-voting systems will not only increase the amount of voters' participation but also will decrease the total cost of electoral process. The main concern with the e-voting system is security. Unlike any other offence it is first difficult to observe ambiguities in voting and also it is much more difficult to locate the lost or to detect the rigged votes. Challenges such as how to authenticate the voter how to securely cast his/her vote and then how to store and to count these votes without outside influence generate whole scrutiny over the e-voting systems. This paper first discusses these challenges and then proposes a unique approach to ensure public confidence and credibility over the electoral systems. This proposal inherits 2 independent modules, first module to verify authentication by implementing an e-government application and smartphone to identify a registered voter. After the completion of successful validation the second module that provides anonymity to the voter similar to TOR (The Onion Router) will be activated to cast the e-ballot.