Performance optimization of a split-value voting system

Abstract

As digital technology becomes more powerful and commonplace, the benefits of using computers to conduct elections become more apparent. In today's elections dominated by paper ballots, we cannot be certain that the election result is correct. Many parts of the world are plagued by corrupt election officials and rampant bribery. In this thesis, we review the cryptographic techniques available for designing a secure election system and introduce a system designed around a verifiable mixnet using split-value commitments. The main work done in this thesis is a series of performance optimizations to the existing prototype, greatly improving the real-world viability of the system. Finally, we suggest further work that can be done to improve performance, fault tolerance, and security. The code that accompanies this thesis may be found at https://github.com/ron-rivest/ split-value-voting.