Crypto Seminar Talk - Electronic Voting

[Dan Shumow]

Title: How Elections Should Really Be Run

Description: This is an election year in the United States, but will
votes be properly counted? Once again, there will be extensive press
coverage and debates about lost votes, suspicious results, and
election technology failures. Every system in widespread use has
significant weaknesses and shortcomings. Is there a better way? This
talk will describe how to use cryptographic techniques to enable truly
verifiable elections. Voters can check that their intended votes are
properly recorded, and voters and observers alike can check that all
recorded votes are counted accurately. This can be done while
preserving secrecy of individual votes and preventing vote selling and
coercion. It isn't even terribly difficult, but will it ever be
accepted?

Bio: Josh Benaloh is senior cryptographer for Microsoft Research
Redmond. He holds an S.B. from MIT and M.S., M.Phil, and Ph.D. degrees
from Yale, where his 1987 dissertation was entitled “Verifiable Secret-
Ballot Elections.”

Guggenheim 415L Thursday 5/15/2008 1:30pm