Vulnerability analysis of three remote voting methods

Abstract

This article analyses three methods of remote voting in an uncontrolled environment: postal voting, internet voting and hybrid voting. It breaks down the voting process into different stages and compares their vulnerabilities considering criteria that must be respected in any democratic vote: confidentiality, anonymity, transparency, vote unicity and authenticity. Whether for safety or reliability, each vulnerability is quantified by three parameters: size, visibility and difficulty to achieve. The study concludes that the automatisation of treatments combined with the dematerialisation of the objects used during an election tends to substitute visible vulnerabilities of a lesser magnitude by invisible and widespread vulnerabilities.