“2,500 years after they first designed democracy’s core operating system of one person one vote, the Greeks are giving it an upgrade.
A team of researchers in Athens say they’ve designed the world’s first encrypted e-voting system where voters can verify that votes cast actually go to the intended candidate.
The process happens on a distributed, publicly-available ledger, much like the blockchain – the peer-reviewed software architecture that underpins bitcoin.
The digital ballot box, called DEMOS, decreases the probability of election fraud as more voters use the system to verify their votes.
Aggelos Kiayias, professor of cryptography and computer security at the University of Athens, who works on DEMOS, said that committed hackers could potentially find ways around the system. Encrypted numbers attributed to voters and to their candidate have to be generated by a “clean” computer – one that hasn’t already been compromised by hackers. Extra security would also have to be in place to make sure the identification keys are not intercepted and manipulated when they travel from the computer to the voter and back.” Read the rest of this story »