A Review of the Underlying Concepts of Electronic Voting

Abstract

Elections and voting are fundamental to any consensus-based society. They are one of the most critical functions of democracy. There are a number of voting systems adopted all over the world with each of them having its peculiar problems. The manual voting system still appears prominent among the developed and developing nations, but with considerations being given to an electronic alternative with a view to showing most of the short comings. Furthermore, with the increased interest and attention on e-government, e-democracy and e-governance, e-voting initiatives have gained more significance. Thus, many countries are piloting with various e-voting models and systems in order to enable voting from anywhere; also, international organisations are developing standards and recommendations in this area. This paper details a review of the underlying concepts of e-voting and discusses some of the salient issues on the subject. Also, a review of common e-voting models, existing elections schemes and explanation of the usual terminologies associated with e-voting were presented.

KEYWORDS: voting, election, democracy, e-voting, cryptography