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For the Next Election, Don’t Recount the Vote. Encrypt It

• em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
  Key takeaway: "thanks to some mathematical sleight-of-hand known as “homomorphic encryption,” not even the election officials counting up the results can decrypt any individual votes. Homomorphic encryption allows simple arithmetic to be performed on encrypted data without decrypting it. So the encrypted votes can be added up and published online to produce an encrypted, public total tally that remains accurate without ever exposing anyone’s vote. Election officials decrypt only that final result, and even they can only do so when a certain number of overseers combine their secret passwords. After the results are decrypted and declared, anyone can re-encrypt them to check that they match the online encrypted tally, to prevent the officials from colluding to falsify the count."