Toggle Main Menu Toggle Search

Open Access padlockePrints

Verifiable Classroom Voting: Where Cryptography Meets Pedagogy

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Feng Hao, Dr Dylan Clarke

Downloads


Abstract

In this paper, we propose - and have implemented - the first verifiable classroom voting system. The subject of secure classroom voting has so far received almost no attention from the security community. Though several commercial classroom voting systems have been available, none of them is verifiable. State-of-the-art verifiable voting protocols all rely on finding a set of trustworthy tallying authorities (who are essentially cryptographers and computer experts) in the first place, and hence are completely unsuitable for classroom voting. Our system design is based on "self-enforcing e-voting" - a new paradigm that was first presented at SPW'12 (Hao, Randell and Clarke). A self-enforcing e-voting scheme provides the same End-to-End (E2E) verifiability as other e-voting schemes but without involving any tallying authorities. The removal of tallying authorities brings several compelling advantages in real-world voting scenarios - here, classroom voting is just one example. We have piloted the use of the developed verifiable classroom voting system in real classroom teaching. Based on our preliminary trial experience, we believe the system is not only scientifically valuable, but also pedagogically useful.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Hao F, Clarke D, Shepherd C

Publication type: Report

Publication status: Published

Series Title: School of Computing Science Technical Report Series

Year: 2013

Pages: 13

Print publication date: 01/05/2013

Source Publication Date: May 2013

Report Number: 1385

Institution: School of Computing Science, University of Newcastle upon Tyne

Place Published: Newcastle upon Tyne

URL: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/publications/trs/papers/1385.pdf


Share