Remote Internet elections and the use of blind digital signatures to protect voter anonymity

Reliable voting technologies are essential to democratic elections. Remote Internet voting, which refers to a system in which ballots may be cast from privately owned PC's anywhere in the world, represents the latest phase in the evolution of U.S. election technology. However, Internet voting presents numerous new security problems, which the electoral system must solve before such systems can be implemented for use in large-scale U.S. elections.; At a minimum, the introduction of an Internet voting system should not degrade the current minimal level of security deemed acceptable by states. Several existing factors make remote Internet voting vulnerable to large-scale fraud and/or violations of voter privacy, not faced by traditional, paper-based voting practices. These include insider programming attacks, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and spoofing of the voting server.; An attempt is made to eliminate a subset of existent voter privacy threats through the use of blind digital signatures. Blind signatures allow a voting service to authenticate the valid registration of an online voter without viewing his or her ballot choices. By an extension of David Chaum's anonymous electronic cash system, a relatively transparent blind signature voting system is developed.