Elections are the foundations of democracy and they have been the target for attack since the dawn of democracy. Over the last few decades the introduction of digital technologies to elections has opened up a raft of new attack vectors. Recently in the US there is discussion of placing voting technologies on the list of national, critical infrastructures. Secure voting protocols, in particular so-called end-to-end verifiable schemes, have been a hot topic of research for the last decade or so. Voting poses many challenges: the precise characterization of subtle properties including verifiability and coercion resistance, accountability etc. and the design and analysis of schemes providing these properties in a complex, hostile environment. The field requires a deep understanding of modern crypto and information security but is also highly interdisciplinary, requiring understanding of the role of humans, physical components, procedures, legal and regulatory aspects etc.
Papers should contain original research in any area related to electronic voting technologies, verifiable elections, and related concerns. Example topics include but are not limited to:
In-person voting systems
Remote/Internet voting systems
Voter registration and authentication systems
Procedures for ballot and election auditing
Cryptographic (or non-cryptographic) verifiable election schemes
Attacks on existing systems
Trust models
Resilience and robustness of voting systems
Designs of new systems
Experiences deploying voting systems or conducting elections
Experiences detecting and recovering from election problems
Formal or informal security or requirements analysis
Examination of usability and accessibility issues
Research on relevant regulations, standards, or laws