Designing A Tamper-Proof Electronic Voting System
India's Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) India's Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) have been in the news a lot lately, and not always for the right reasons. There have been complaints by some candidates that when voters pressed the button in their favour, another party's symbol lit up. Faced with accusations that the EVMs may have been hacked (especially with the string of electoral successes of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party), India's Election Commission has begun to conduct elections with a Voter-Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) , which prints out the details of the party/candidate that a voter selected, so they can verify that their vote was registered correctly. An EVM unit with a printer to provide immediate paper verification to voters As a systems architect, I'm afraid I have to say that may not be good enough. Let me explain why, and then suggest a more foolproof alternative. First of all, my familiarity with IT security tells me never to believe that