A novel voting scheme using quantum cryptography

Abstract

Many problems shadow the traditional method of casting votes. The chief predicament faced is that the voting area is usually politically tense and votes are in the danger of being compromised or coerced while they are stored in each constituency and also when they are being transported to the final tallying destination. We propose a novel method in which votes are not cached in the voting machines but are transferred in real time to a predetermined secure location. To achieve this transfer we propound to use cryptographic methods and proceed to analyze which cryptosystem would be best suited for this application. We introduce our voting scheme which utilizes Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) and propose a novel latency examination technique to detect and thwart man-in-the-middle attacks that might be employed to hack QKD systems. Further we discuss the necessity for post quantum cryptography and research how we might use multivariate public key cryptography for our voting scheme in the post-quantum era.