MODEL OF AN ELECTRONIC VOTING SCHEME WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF CHANGING THE PARTICIPANT'S DECISION BEFORE THE END OF VOTING
Abstract
Existing electronic voting protocols often feature an architecture where ballot submission is an irreversible action. This significantly reduces system usability, depriving the participant of the right to correct an accidental error or change their opinion during lengthy decision-making procedures. The aim of the work is to develop a model of a cryptographic protocol that provides a native capability for multiple decision changes to enhance usability while maintaining strict anonymity and counting correctness. The architecture is based on the integration of a trapdoor commitment scheme to implement choice flexibility, a verifiable random function (VRF) for ballot generation, the Privacy Pass protocol for anonymous authorization, and mix-networks. An electronic voting protocol has been developed that implements the possibility for a participant to change their decision multiple times. The fulfillment of basic and some extended security properties, including, but not limited to, participant confidentiality and universal verifiability, has been theoretically proven. It is shown that, unlike existing analogs, changing a decision in the proposed model does not require repeating a complex authentication procedure or key revocation, which minimizes the number of interactive user actions. The proposed solution aligns the user experience of secure voting with the standards of modern digital services by providing a choice editing function, thereby increasing the convenience of the voting procedure for participants. The modular structure of the model allows for the application of any robust cryptographic algorithms, including post-quantum ones
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