Civitas and the Real World: Problems and Solutions from a Practical Point of View

In the past, researchers have proposed manyvoting schemes that satisfy a wide range of security properties. These schemes often rely on strong trust assumptionsand do not consider the voter sufficiently, which currentlyrenders them inappropriate for usage in real-world elections. In this paper we focus on the voting scheme Civitas, whichfeatures provably strong security properties, such as end-toend verifiability and coercion-resistance. We identify the strongtrust assumptions and usability weaknesses of the scheme, which currently prevent its usage in real-world elections. Basedon these results, we show how most of these strong trustassumptions can be implemented, e.g., by using eID cards inorder to overcome Civitas' most critical usability problem, namely credential handling. Together with a voter-processdescription and a user-interface, we pave the way for the useof Civitas in real-world elections.