Riera and Borrell presentation (FWD)

Thu Mar 18 01:10:00 PST 1999

For those of you who are running Windows 95/98 and want to read Postscript
files, there's a free Postscript viewer called Ghostview which will
display and print them (ala Adobe Acrobat, albeit with a not-as-pretty
interface).

Download the self-extracting EXE here:
ftp://ftp.cs.wisc.edu/ghost/aladdin/gs550/gsv27550.exe

Somewhat confusing instructions here:
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/aladdin/get550.html

Hope this helps
Rob

On Wed, 17 Mar 1999, Michael A. Schoenfield wrote:

> Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 14:58:50 -0000
> From: "Michael A. Schoenfield" <maschoen at execpc.com>
> Reply-To: "Michael A. Schoenfield" <2637.Mason.Street at execpc.com>,
>     Madison at execpc.com, WI.53705-3709 at execpc.com
> To: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
> Subject: Re: Riera and Borrell presentation (FWD)
> Resent-Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 12:59:29 -0800
> Resent-From: election-methods-list at eskimo.com
> 
> I am very interested in your papers relating to voting and those concerned
> with electoral colleges. However, I am unable to read PostScript files (Word
> 97 is my processor program). Can your translate these couple of files to
> Microsoft Word (any version) and/or Portable Document File (PDF file) which
> can be read using Adobe. I will appreciate any assistance that you can/will
> give me in obtaining your papers.
> 
> Michael S.
> Michael Schoenfield
> Michael A. Schoenfield & Associates, Ltd.
> 2637 Mason Street
> Madison, WI 53705-3709
> 
> (608) 238-6121 Office
> (608) 233-2507 Fax & Internet
> maschoen at execpc.com
> http://www.angelfire.com/biz/maschoen/
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <DEMOREP1 at aol.com>
> To: <election-methods-list at eskimo.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 17, 1999 3:48 AM
> Subject: Re: Riera and Borrell presentation (FWD)
> 
> 
> >Subj:   Re: Riera and Borrell presentation
> >Date:  Tue, Mar 16, 1999 4:41 PM EDT
> >From:  lorrie at research.att.com
> >X-From: lorrie at research.att.com (Lorrie Faith Cranor)
> >Sender: owner-e-lection at research.att.com
> >To: e-lection at research.att.com
> >
> >[A clarification from the author.... Note that this and other
> >papers are available from the author's web site at:
> >http://www.ccd.uab.es/~andreu/indexenglish.shtml --LFC]
> >
> >From: "A. Riera" <andreu at abra.uab.es>
> >
> >Hello,
> >
> >I would like to furtherly clarify some of the points of the
> >report by Tatyana Ryutov on our paper at the NDSS '99:
> >
> >> "Next was an interesting paper "Practical Approach to Anonymity in
> >> Large Scale Electronic Voting Schemes" by Andreu Riera and Joan
> >> Borrell (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain). Andreu Riera
> >> presented.  Their work considered how to implement a realistic large
> >> scale voting system.  Their scheme is based on cooperation of multiple
> >> hierarchically arranged electoral authorities.
> >
> >The main aim of the paper is to propose a suitable way to integrate
> >the mix functionality into the design of the voting scheme itself,
> >thus removing any need for mix-nets. Additional advantages are
> >achieved. The hierarchical arrangement of voting authorities that
> >allow to realistically implement a large scale voting system was
> >adopted from a previous work:
> >
> >A.Riera, J.Borrell, J.Rifa. Large Scale Elections by Coordinating
> >Electoral Colleges. In Proceedings of the IFIP SEC '97 Conference,
> >Copenhagen. ISBN 0-412-81780-2, pp. 349-363.
> >
> >> The advantages of this
> >> scheme are: single non-anonymous voting session (a widely accepted
> >> solution is based on two sessions anonymous and non-anonymous) and no
> >> requirements for external mixes.
> >
> >The advantages are:
> >
> >The fairness requirement is fulfilled since all ballots remain enveloped
> >while the voting phase is not completed. The voter casts the desired
> >ballot
> >during a single session established with the ballot collecting
> >authority.
> >If a ballot is removed from the tally, then there is a mechanism by
> >which
> >the authority responsible for the election can identify the attacker.
> >Problems of low traffic incoming at any shuffling server disappear,
> >because shuffling is performed when all ballots are already cast. The
> >system is totally self-contained, and therefore its implementation is
> >simplified and any dependency on mix-nets is removed.
> >
> >> The anonymity is provided by
> >> shuffling ballot boxes a number of times.  There are restrictions to
> >> this approach. The proposed scheme can model all commonly accepted
> >> security requirements, except uncoercibility (inability of voters to
> >> prove in which way they voted), which require hardware components to
> >> be added into the scheme.
> >>
> >
> >A practical proposal to solve uncoercibility without sacrificing
> >mobility
> >of voters can be found in:
> >
> >A.Riera, J.Borrell. An uncoercible verifiable electronic voting
> >protocol.
> >Proceedings of the IFIP SEC '98 Conference, Vienna-Budapest, 1998.
> >ISBN 3-85403-116-5, pp. 206-215.
> >
> >> "A participant asked if the scheme was implemented. Andreu replied that
> >> they are working on the protocol.  Someone asked: authentication of
> >> the voter is required, how privacy is maintained?  Andreu explained
> >> that authentication of the voter private key is required, to assure
> >> privacy the blind signature mechanism is used.
> >
> >Voters are authenticated by the ballot collecting centres, in order to
> >preserve the democracy requirement. To assure privacy, we combine blind
> >signatures with the mix functionality.
> >
> >>
> >> "Another question was: Is this complexity practical for real system?
> >> Andreu: complexity is inevitable.
> >
> >I meant that electronic voting schemes are inevitably complex in the
> >sense
> >that many security requirements are involved and they are often
> >contradictory.
> >However, another question is the computational complexity. When
> >designing
> >voting schemes that have to be implemented, the complexity of the
> >various
> >alternative techniques has to influence the choice between them. For
> >example, blind signatures and the ANDOS protocol have the same effect
> >when used in a voting schemes. The computational cost of the former is
> >however much lower than that of the latter.
> >
> >> Another question was about association between a voter and his vote.
> >> Andrew pointed out that it was not possible to detect association
> >> between a voter and his vote."
> >
> >It is indeed not possible to link a voter to his or her vote, PROVIDED
> >that at least one of the shuffling servers implementing the mix
> >functionality remains honest and uncompromised.
> >
> >Andreu
> >-----------------------------------------------------------
> >Andreu Riera Jorba
> >Dept. Informxtica
> >Universitat AutUnoma de Barcelona
> >08193 BELLATERRA (BCN)
> >Catalonia - Spain
> >
> >Phone# +34 93 581 1777
> >Fax#   +34 93 581 3033
> >E-mail ariera at ccd.uab.es
> >WWW    http://ccd.uab.es/~andreu
> >
> >This message was distributed through the e-lection mailing list.
> >For info and archives see http://www.research.att.com/~lorrie/voting/
> >
> 

Rob Lanphier
robla at eskimo.com
http://www.eskimo.com/~robla