Editorial

When democratic trust is low, digital trust provides a way to secure voting

With the push to make elections more digital, comes the need to ensure the integrity of elections. Dr. Avesta Hojjati, VP of R&D at DigiCert, looks at how can this be done to ensure citizen confidence in election processes and outcomes.

Posted 30 March 2023 by Christine Horton


Putting a paper ballot into a ballot box every few years can often seem a bit old-fashioned. While we conduct much of our lives digitally, over encrypted connections with people on the other side of the globe, this particular part of civil life has stayed resolutely analogue.

From the possibility of incomplete ballots, the ambiguity of the “hanging chad” and the potential scope for abuse in the counting process, paper balloting can be an imperfect system.

The integrity of election processes are a cornerstone of a stable democracy. Indeed, if these processes can’t be trusted, then the functions of a democratic state will undoubtedly be also viewed with suspicion.

However, the alternative – digital elections – are also viewed with suspicion. Amid accusations of hacking, voter privacy, foreign interference and digital tampering, many have pointed out the potential risks that orbit digital voting.

The historical record on digital elections paints a complex picture. Estonia, widely touted as one of the world’s best examples of effective e-government, has run successful online elections for nearly two decades. Citizens can vote from any computer, anywhere in the world and to date, there have been no reports of interference and confidence in the process remains high.

However, it is just one case out of many. The nearby democracy of Norway tested online voting in 2011. The system enjoyed mostly positive feedback, with users citing how easy and practical the system was. However, in 2013 they returned to paper ballots due to fears around foreign interference and voter anonymity.

Digital trust

IDC defines digital trust as “a measure of confidence and assurance that the digital products and services the world relies on every day are safe to use because they are genuine and secure.” It can be achieved by using processes and technologies which enable them to confidently engage with those products and services.

In the same way, securing elections with digital trust can enable a new generation of electoral processes, and perhaps overcome some of the suspicion with which they are viewed.

Public Key Infrastructures (PKIs) have a long record of endowing websites with digital trust and are now being used to secure the growing global population of IoT devices, software and digital content, user and device access to enterprise networks, and much more. As a system for issuing and managing the digital certificates which encrypt communications, authenticate identity and ensure the integrity of transmitted data, they can help secure large, multifaceted ecosystems.

In the case of digital elections, PKIs can use certificates, signatures and identities to account for each element of the voting process and mitigate the scope for abuse at multiple stages.

Securing ballot authenticity

Ballots are a record of a citizen’s vote and, as such, are one of the most sensitive pieces of paper a voter will ever hold. Endowing ballots with digital trust means signing each voter’s ballot with a government eSeal signature to ensure not only that the ballot is legitimate and from the electoral authority, but also that no one has tampered with it in transit.

Securing electoral identities

The identities of both voters and poll workers are important concerns in online elections. The possibility that a malicious attacker might impersonate one presents serious concerns of a security breach which could harm the integrity of the digital voting process.

Endowing this stage with digital trust would mean assigning digital identities to every individual involved in the process. These can be assigned beforehand in a separate process whereby each of those individuals can verify their identity and then be assigned a digital certificate, which acts as a marker of that verification.

Securing the counting process

Electoral authorities can then bring these two stages together to cryptographically bind voter identity to individual ballots using a digital signature. Digital signatures both attest to that voters’ identity and authorise their choice. Since digital signatures also record a timestamp, they help to verify that the ballot has not been tampered with and has been entered during the authorised voting period.

Poll workers can also sign ballot counts using their pre-assigned digital identities. This will cryptographically bind their identities to the count results.

By injecting trust at each of these stages, certificates and signatures can link together a chain of trust in which each stage relies on and enables the previous stage’s trustworthiness. In this way, digital trust can ensure the integrity of these processes. In removing the potential opportunities for abuse such as fake ballots, identity fraud, ballot interception and tampering with the count.

Digital trust can enable digital elections

Digital voting can offer more than secure elections. It provides a way to make election processes more productive and efficient by allowing computers to handle much of the grunt work of elections. This means that the manual labour of handling mail-in ballots, counting paper ballots and providing physical voting centres can be mitigated by handing off that work to a digital process. If done correctly, digital voting can provide an audited record of votes made and counted, and can provide voting results in a timely fashion to avoid the appearance of impropriety and build voter trust.

As more democracies consider ways to digitise the vote while ensuring the need for confidence in elections, smart approaches are essential to safe and fair elections. Digital trust offers a way to secure voting practices and reinforce the digitization of democratic processes.