Voting is one of the most recognized symbols of democracy. Having been around for over two millennia, we might expect voting mechanisms to be a solved problem. However, it turns out that this is not the case. The reason is a "contradiction" in our security requirements from voting. We want voting to be resistant to vote buying and coercion—implying ballots must be secret—but at the same time verifiably resistant to tampering—implying that the ballot counting must be public.
Surprisingly, this contradiction can be resolved! Using cryptography, we can construct "end-to-end-verifiable" voting systems with secret ballots and verifiable integrity. In this talk, I will give an introduction to cryptographic voting schemes and highlight some unexpected advantages over their non-verifiable brethren: a potential for increased robustness, flexibility and 'traditional' (non-cryptographic) auditability.
Tal Moran, IDC Herzliya