Bulletin boards play a vital role in ensuring the integrity and verifiability of cryptographically secure voting systems. Acting as a centralized storage system, the bulletin board serves as a transparent platform where all public information related to the election is openly published, enabling anyone to scrutinise, assess, and audit the process.
Introduction
Bulletin boards play a vital role in ensuring the integrity and verifiability of cryptographically secure voting systems. Acting as a centralized storage system, the bulletin board serves as a transparent platform where all public information related to the election is openly published, enabling anyone to scrutinise, assess, and audit the process. In the realm of end-to-end verifiable voting systems, the bulletin board becomes even more significant as it holds crucial information required to validate the adherence to established protocols, confirm the accuracy of the reported results, and safeguard against any potential manipulation by administrators or other entities.
In a typical scenario, the bulletin board acts as a repository for various essential components of a voting system. It securely stores crucial information, including public keys and key generation specifics, records of voting events and encrypted votes, decryption and tally results, and robust mathematical proofs validating the accuracy of these elements. Moreover, the bulletin board assumes the role of an audit ledger, diligently logging significant events and actions, and providing a transparent record that can be accessed and reviewed by anyone seeking to ensure the system’s integrity.
There are some desirable properties that bulletin boards must have to better meet their objectives:
1. Distributed
In this way, elections can continue to be conducted despite DDOS attacks. In order to achieve this property, hard problems such as byzantine consensus and distribution engineering challenges must be resolved.
2. Chronological
Logging of events and data on the bulletin board should reflect the order in which they occur.
3. Tamper-Resistant
It should not be possible to manipulate results or remove records from the audit log by altering bulletin board records.
4. Publically Auditable
Information on bulletin boards should be auditable by anyone. Specifically, this property should be supportive of end-to-end verifiability.
5. Access Controlled and Authenticated
A bulletin board should include mechanisms for controlling what information can be posted, as well as digital signatures for information and receipts for certification.
In Summary
Developing a robust bulletin board using blockchain technologies could be a fascinating research project. As well as offering some support for signatures, blockchain technology seems particularly well suited to satisfy distribution, chronology, tamper resistance, and auditing needs. To ensure that the throughput is compatible with voting needs, efficiency considerations regarding the number of “transactions” per second would also need to be considered.