A coercion-resistant protocol for conducting elections by telephone

Abstract

We present a protocol that allows voters to phone in their votes. Our protocol makes it expensive for a candidate and a voter to cooperate to prove to the candidate who the voter voted for. When the electoral pool is large enough, the cost to the candidate of manipulating sufficiently many votes to have an influence on the election results becomes impossibly expensive. Hence, the protocol provides candidates no incentive to attempt inducement or coercion of voters, resulting in free and fair elections with the promise of cost savings and higher voter turnout over traditional elections. One major inadequacy with our suggested protocol is that we assume the existence of a trusted election authority to count the votes.