Proving the monotonicity criterion for a plurality vote-counting program as a step towards verified vote-counting

Abstract

We show how modern interactive verification tools can be used to prove complex properties of vote-counting software. Specifically, we give an ML implementation of a votecounting program for plurality voting; we give an encoding of this program into the higher-order logic of the HOL4 theorem prover; we give an encoding of the monotonicity property in the same higher-order logic; we then show how we proved that the encoding of the program satisfies the encoding of the monotonicity property using the interactive theorem prover HOL4. As an aside, we also show how to prove the correctness of the vote-counting program. We then discuss the robustness of our approach.