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E-Voting System Requirement

• - Describes requirements as must and nice to have for an e-voting system of CAcert Inc.

• - Inputs & Discussion page for developing a new Voting System to support Association votes.

Project Overview

• E-Voting System - Progress & Notes

• Mathieu on Helios

• Helios Voting on Technology Laboratory

• GRDM on Technology Laboratory

• LimeSurvey on Technology Laboratory

Requirements

• These are the business or high-level things that we want:

R1. Certificates

• - Should use our certs to identify our members.
• - This might knock out IRC. Likely we want to do a website anyway, like the Board's voting system.
• - Small-factor devices like phones and PDAs my have trouble with certificates. However it is not as if there is a better authentication method.

R2. Transparent

• - Must be capable of being audited and clearly transparent. The community is somewhat aggressive on the security auditing front, so avoid blah blah hand-waving solutions.

R2.1 Voter Transparency

• - Voters must be able to validate that their vote has been received correctly.

R2.2 Association Vote Transparency

• - The association members must have a way to reasonably validate the final result of a vote:
  • - All votes are by association members, one per member,
  • - All votes are collected without interference.

R3. Secret / Open Voting

• - Support both Secret and Open ballots.
• - Commentary:
  • - Does it need to support Secret ballots or Open ballots? Maybe the requirement is for both, and we have to choose at a business level. This question is not settled. There are those who argue for secret ballots for people, and those who argue against....
  • - It appears that the approach should be, implement in this order:
    • 1. open ballot
    • 2. semi-open ballot (open ofter close)
    • 3. closed ballot.

R3.1 Secret Ballot for Voting Period

• - The votes and tally will be secret while the vote is in progress.

  • - Mario writes of a middle position: "There should be the possibility of secret voting. But my main target for this is to avoid tactical behavior. After votes/meeting closes the votes should be public for transparency and traceability."

R3.2 Secret Ballot for all Time

• - The mappings between the voter and their vote will be not be public. This is primarily for votes for Members.
• - To implement transparency, Lambert writes:
  • - R2.1 sends out a signed email to the voter (email address taken from the certificate) so that the voter can validate that his/her vote has been correctly accepted by the voting system (voter can validate his/her vote).
  • - R2.2 Audit process can consist every voter emailing their vote to a (group of) Arbitrators. In effect, a second count can be collected by signed emails (another channel). The statement of the Arbitrator on the results should be reliable.

R4. Ease of Use

• - Must be trivial to understand and drive. Instructions should be easy or not necessary. Stopping the Voting 'in the middle' to discuss whether or not it is being done properly should never, ever happen in /any/ System.

R5. Tested and Used

• - Needs to be bedded in and strong before the AGM in November. Implemented, deployed, tested, practiced and experimented *prior* to being utilized for AGM Voting.

R6. Scaleable

• - Must be able to scale up to Assurer numbers (currently 2500) and beyond.

R7. Long Running Votes

• - Must be able to accept votes for 1-2 weeks prior the the AGM/SGM deciding time.

R8. Proxy Votes

• - Must be able to accept proxy votes from duly authorized people.

R9. Vote Types

R9.1 Vote Type - Motion

• - It will be possible to put a motion type of vote where voters indicate 'Aye', 'Naye' or 'Abstain'

R9.2 Vote Type - Election

• - It will be possible to elect (a person) out of a list.
• - (TODO) vote types? - first past the post, preferential .....

• - (This should also be scalable for association members to select between a number of exclusive times). (iang) don't understand, times?

Inputs & Thoughts

• 20090915-DanielBlack - e-mail

• The number of requirements for the association voting system is a little low 
  and lacking in complete clarity and not as widely considered as I'd like.
  
  If you want it to happen put in your requirements and any investigations you 
  have done - like Helios.
  http://wiki.cacert.org/wiki/Technology/Laboratory/HeliosVoting
  
  Without this there will be no voting system.

• 20091101-hugi

• Will Sequoia be as open, in terms of Open Source, as they announce?: "SEQUOIA VOTING SYSTEMS ANNOUNCES THE FIRST TRANSPARENT ELECTION SYSTEM WITH FULLY DISCLOSED, FREELY AVAILABLE SOURCE CODE AND OPEN ARCHITECTURE DEVELOPED TO MEET FEDERAL VOTING SYSTEM GUIDELINES". More see: http://www.sequoiavote.com/press.php?ID=85

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