Electronic voting systems: security implications of the administrative workflow

With the rapid growth of the Internet, online voting appears to be a reasonable alternative to conventional elections and other opinion expressing processes. Current research focuses on designing and building "voting protocols" that can support the voting process, while implementing the security mechanisms required for preventing fraud and protecting voter's privacy. However, not much attention has been paid to the administrative part of an electronic voting system that supports the actors of the system. Possible "security gaps" in the administrative workflow may result in deteriorating the overall security level of the system, even if the voting protocol implemented by the system succeeds to fully comply with the security requirements set for voting. To this direction, this paper describes the responsibilities and privileges of the actors involved in the electronic voting process. The description of the role of each actor, together with the clear indication of what each actor is expected - and thus allowed - to do with the system, formulate an operational framework that complements the technological security features of the system and allows us to talk about "secure electronic voting systems".