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International Conference on Decision and Game Theory for Security

GameSec 2016: Decision and Game Theory for Security pp 235–247Cite as

Strategies for Voter-Initiated Election Audits

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 9996))

Abstract

Many verifiable electronic voting systems are dependent on voter-initiated auditing. This auditing allows the voter to check the construction of their cryptographic ballot, and is essential in both gaining assurance in the honesty of the constructing device, and ensuring the integrity of the election as a whole. A popular audit approach is the Benaloh Challenge [5], which involves first constructing the complete ballot, before asking the voter whether they wish to cast or audit it.

In this paper we model the Benaloh Challenge as an inspection game, and evaluate various voter strategies for deciding whether to cast or audit their ballot. We shall show that the natural strategies for voter-initiated auditing do not form Nash equilibria, assuming a payoff matrix that describes remote voting. This prevents authorities from providing voters with a sensible auditing strategy. We will also show that when the constructing device has prior knowledge of how a voter might vote, it critically undermines the effectiveness of the auditing. This is particularly relevant to internet voting systems, some of which also rely on Benaloh Challenges for their auditing step.

A parallel version, in which the voter constructs multiple ballots and then chooses which one to vote with, can form Nash equilibria. It still relies on some uncertainty about which one the voter will choose.

C. Culnane—Partially funded by Australian Research Council Discovery project DP140101119 ‘More information for better utility; less information for better privacy’.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Wojtek Jamroga, Ron Rivest, and Josh Benaloh for interesting conversations about this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computing and Information Systems, Melbourne School of Engineering, University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, 3010, Australia

    Chris Culnane & Vanessa Teague

Authors
  1. Chris Culnane
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  2. Vanessa Teague
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Chris Culnane .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. New York University , New York, New York, USA

    Quanyan Zhu

  2. The University of Melbourne , Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Tansu Alpcan

  3. University of Brighton , Brighton, United Kingdom

    Emmanouil Panaousis

  4. University of Southern California , Los Angeles, California, USA

    Milind Tambe

  5. Carnegie Mellon University , Pittsburgh, New York, USA

    William Casey

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Culnane, C., Teague, V. (2016). Strategies for Voter-Initiated Election Audits. In: Zhu, Q., Alpcan, T., Panaousis, E., Tambe, M., Casey, W. (eds) Decision and Game Theory for Security. GameSec 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9996. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47413-7_14

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47413-7_14

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-47412-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-47413-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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