This paper shows the lack of standard procedures to audit e-voting systems and also describes a practical process of auditing an e-voting experience based on a Direct-recording Electronic system (D.R.E). This system has been tested in a real situation, in the city council of Coahuila, Mexico, in November 2008. During the auditing, several things were kept in mind, in particular those critical in complex contexts, as democratic election processes are. The auditing process is divided into three main complementary stages: analysis of voting protocol, analysis of polling station hardware elements, and analysis of the software involved. Each stage contains several items which have to be analyzed at low level with the aim to detect and resolve possible security problems.
Election Process
For each electronic polling station, an electoral table supervises the voting process, including both, the casting of the ballots and the counting of the votes. Citizens who live in the constituency where the polling station is installed compose the electoral table. That means that a President, a Technical Secretary, a person in charge of counting, and a Substitute to replace any of the other three in case of absence.
The people of the Electoral Table have to do several tasks such as: open and close the Electoral Table, install, open and close the polling station, use the control codes, receive the votes, close the voting, close the polling station, count the votes, send the results and finally publishing the results at the Electoral College. All steeps have perfectly defined by the Electoral and Voter Participation Institute of the State of Coahuila.
The polling station of our case study is based on a printed code to operate the e-Polling Station. Two kinds of codes are available to operate the e-polling station: control codes and access election codes. In our station, these codes consist of printed barcode cards that slide through a reader. These codes allow the handling of the station, and must be used only by the president of the electoral table:
- •
Verification Code: To check the right function of the station prior to opening it.
- •
Open Code: Used just once each Election Day to start the voting.
- •
Close Code: To be used only once in order to finish the voting.
- •
Restore Code: In case of power failure, the station must be restarted and data recovered by means of this code.
- •
Reprint Code: To get a second copy of the printed ballot in case of malfunction during its printing.