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SEEV – SMS external encrypted voting

 

http://www.cd3wd.com/SEEV/SeevPpsHtm.htm - a single file htm version of power-point presentation of the SEEV System – this is the best and quickest way to grasp what SEEV is about!... – for all users

 

http://www.cd3wd.com/SEEV/SeevPPT.ppt  - a power-point presentation of the SEEV System – this is the best and quickest way to grasp what SEEV is about!...  – for windows users only

 

http://www.cd3wd.com/SEEV/SeevPPT.htm - a htm version of power-point presentation of the SEEV System – this is the best and quickest way to grasp what SEEV is about!... – for windows and Internet Explorer users only

 

Press Release 23 July 2006 – version 18 - with revisions and additions as of 7 March 2007 and 4 January 2009

 

Low-cost Tamper-proof electronic voting for the 3rd world - SEEV

 

Executive Summary

 

Elections in the 3rd world are a major problem.  SEEV is a new innovative concept which uses entirely existing technologies (mobile phone sms and TAN-envelopes) in conjunction with an external international processing center to ensure that phantom voters, ballot-box stuffing, count fraud etc are a thing of the past.  And the cost of this electronic voting should be less than present-day paper voting systems. SEEV could hold its first election within 6 months of project go-ahead.

 

http://www.cd3wd.com/SEEV/SeevPPT.htm - a power-point presentation of the SEEV System – this is the best and quickest way to grasp what SEEV is about!...

 

 

Postscript 7 December 2008

 

After the electoral fiascos of Nigeria, Kenya and Zimbabwe, I had hoped that the International Community, who love democracy so much, would have fought their way to my doorstep bearing armfuls of money to fund this project.  But no…..  Therefore I am requesting donations – http://www.cd3wd.com/donation/ - with which this project can go forwards.  Without meaningful money, this thing will go nowhere….

 

 

UN Declaration of Human Rights - http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm

 

Article 21.

 

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

 

(2) Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.

 

(3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures. (my italics)

 

 

Main Document

 

It is a known but under-appreciated fact that corruption is a major obstacle to economic, social and human development in the 3rd world.  ‏It is known also that most if not all 3rd world elections are problematic, but Conventional Wisdom dictates that the efforts of the Carter Center, EU and others in stationing external election observers largely solves this problem;  It does NOT.

 

The only way to ensure that 3rd world governments bow out when the will of the people is against them is to make the election voting, vote counting and vote count aggregation processes run wholly by external parties (e.g. a UN-related or other independent Global Electoral Commission – GEC).

 

The problem with that scenario is that the cost and logistics of a worldwide mobile caravan could easily challenge the most organized organization and could break anyone’s bank.

 

 

So why not take advantage of modern technology to solve the problem, with the following requirements:

 

-          the national government must not have any idea of how any single individual voted

 

-          each individual who voted must have some kind of confirmation that their vote for a certain candidate was indeed processed as a vote for that candidate and not as a vote for any other candidate

 

Of course national governments will still try to cheat by not registering voters, by giving their supporters multiple votes, by creating phantom voters, but even some of these methods of cheating can probably be addressed by a high-tech, low-cost solution.

 

 

A promising technique is to use mobile phone SMS (text) messaging.  My proposed system would work as follows:

 

 

-          each voter is issued a PIN- and TAN-number envelope, with secret numbers inside which are valid for the impending election only.  On the outside of the sealed VE (voters envelope) there is a unique voters ID number (e.g. for Zimbabwe it may be like 263 999 999 999, with 263 designating the country, and there being enough digits for about 200 times the actual number of registered voters).  Note that the VE has the UVN in normal number representation and also in barcode format, so that it can be accurately read and logged at the time of VE distribution.

 

-          the candidates each have a 4-digit number, say 0001 through 9999 (in some elections there may be that number of candidates; although in presidential elections the candidates who matter are usually 2 in number).  The Candidate Number (CN) of each candidate is highly publicized and cannot be changed by the sitting government at any time, and especially not close to the election itself.  Indeed the CN will be prominently displayed on all election posters for that candidate.

 

-          On the day of voting each voter uses his or her voter’s envelope (or better still, a pen-and-paper copy of all or only part of that envelope’s contents).  There is an encryption grid.

 

 

Unique Voter Number = 263 925 837 169  (repeated from the outside of the envelope)

 

        SEND                                                                                    RECEIVE

 

1st digit

2nd digit

3rd digit

4th digit

1st digit

2nd digit

3rd digit

4th digit

0

217

174

131

288

248

205

162

319

1

947

904

861

818

978

935

892

849

2

833

790

747

704

864

821

778

735

3

267

224

181

138

298

255

212

169

4

183

140

997

554

214

171

128

585

5

569

526

483

440

600

557

514

471

6

933

890

847

804

964

921

878

835

7

102

959

916

873

133

990

947

904

8

384

341

298

255

415

372

329

286

9

778

735

692

649

809

766

723

680

 

The above grid is used as follows:

 

If you choose the candidate 0001, then send a message as follows:

 

263 925 837 169*217 174 131 818

 

Soon after sending, you should receive a confirmation message which reads:

 

263 925 837 169*248 205 162 849

 

 

Similarly, the codes for candidate 9531 are:

 

263 925 837 169*778 526 181 818 (send)

 

and

 

263 925 837 169*809 557 212 849 (receive)

 

 

Note that every grid for each one of the 5 million or 50 million or 500 million voter’s envelopes is different, and that these number grids are effectively one-time-pad encryption pads.  The origin of these printed envelopes is a computer database table, which is stored under extremely high security at the IPC (and which is used to process the incoming SMS messages at the time of voting).

 

 

You get access to a mobile phone, you send an international SMS to the service center number at the IPC (which is in Norway or Sweden – as a convention we will used Sweden elsewhere in this document).  Since you chose candidate #1, you send 263 925 837 169*217 174 131 818

 

Note that any and all erroneous, false or bogus sms’s are logged and stored for later analysis by the Global Electoral Commission.   217 174 131 818

 is the encrypted vote, which is de-encrypted on the database server in Sweden to read candidate #1.

 

Within some minutes the phone you used should get a message back which reads:

 

263 925 837 169*248 205 162 849

 

 

This is confirmation that the remote system received your vote and processed it for candidate # 1 – if you don’t get any message in return or you don’t get the message content 925 837 169*248 205 162 849, then something went wrong somewhere – possibly due to your government fiddling with the process.  You can resend several times, and hopefully after 2 or 3 tries you get a successful confirmation.

 

 

 

OK – that is an overview of how things will work.  Here follows some FAQ’s (frequently asked questions):

 

 

Q.    In a typical 3rd world country, only 5% of the population has a mobile phone.  How do you get around that?

 

A.    Sharing of one phone inside a family and extended family, a neighbourhood, and the use of mobile payphones and phone shops and kiosks..(these are widely prevalent in 3rd world countries).  In some remote rural areas, international NGO’s may be kitted up to provide sufficient mobile phone service for the voting period only.  Satellite phones provided by international NGO’s can be used in very remote areas.

 

 

Q.    The question of getting that return/confirmation message could be a problem if there are a lot of people queuing up to make their outward voting sms..

 

A.    It is possible to have a virtual phone number for receiving sms messages – checkout the whole SAM concept at http://www.cd3wd.com/SAM/index.htm .  Additionally, all results could be displayed on a website on a series of static webpages, maintained by the IPC; these results could be reprinted by national newspapers if they so wished.

 

 

Q.    There are whole rural areas and remote regions of some 3rd world countries with no mobile phone system or reception?

 

A.    International development donors could provide funds for the necessary infrastructure to rectify that situation; and/or a paper vote could be necessary for those areas only.  It should be possible for voters to travel (typically walk) up to 10 km to get to a mobile phone reception zone.  Additionally, national government regulation of MPP’s could require that between them the various MPP’s inside the country should effectively subsidise remote communities from the proceeds of their urban operations, so as to install the necessary infrastructure for nationwide coverage.

 

 

Q.   How do you handle a country like Malawi, where only 1% or less have mobile phones, and despite concentrated populations, then reception away from main roads does not exist?

 

A.  This requires 2 parallel programs – Malawi and similar countries require a ‘phone-aid’ program (similar to the 1985 BandAid) to donate ‘obsolete’ Nokia 3310 and 1100 phones and similar from advanced countries like UK and Germany free of charge to rural and urban communities and individuals.  This is a great cause for Bob Geldof and Bono, especially when linked to democratic voting and to economic development.  The other side is that donors and commercial MPP’s must input funds to install infrastructure and mobile masts, which must be network-independent – i.e. they must operate with all commercial networks…  Note that the retail price of new handsets is typically US$ 75 even for the most basic, whereas the cost of a mobile line SIM card in most African countries is usually less than US$ 1; therefore the handset cost is the bottleneck, not the line (SIM Card) cost.

 

 

Q.  What about REALLY remote areas which cannot justify mast erection?

 

A. Use Thuraya, Iridium or other satellite or gsm/satellite dual systems to effect the voting process – NGO trucks will turn up at voting week with banks of these phones to allow the extremely remote areas to exercise their democratic rights..  And here, people must be prepared to walk 20 km (not the usual 10 km) in order to vote…

 

 

Q.    What about the ability of old people to understand the grid concept to do the ‘simple’ encryption?

 

A.      Since voting will no longer be location-dependent, and may be scheduled to take place over a 7-day period, then it should be possible for the (grown-up) children and/or grandchildren to travel to the grandparents to assist them in the voting process, even although they are not in the same Constituency.  Alternatively, people from the rural areas can travel to their relatives in the urban areas for the week of voting.  In any case, there will have to be some voter education prior to the election (and maybe even a trial or pilot election with bogus candidates, in order to determine the percentage of problems which would occur in the real election).

 

 

Q.    Why should we have the Norwegians or Swedes run this system and not the Americans or the British? 

 

A.     The Americans and British have a credibility problem with some or even many 3rd world governments.

 

 

Q.    Why is the encryption so simple?  Can it not be cracked by malicious governments?

 

A.   It needs to be simple so that the codes can be calculated by a person with low or zero education and low numeracy.  It is uncrackable because it is a ‘one-time-pad’ system.

 

 

Q.  What happens if you do not after some time receive a returned code/ confirmation?

 

A.   You should resubmit the same message again – doing so may be logged as an error or a malicious action, but the system will also send out a second confirmation message (identical to the first).

 

 

Q.  What about the cost of all these SMS’s?

 

A.  Sending all SMS to that IPC number will be free of charge – that will be programmed into the national MPP (mobile phone providers) systems… This will apply only for the day or the week of voting.  The GEC will of course fund all confirmation SMS’s outgoing from the IPC.

 

 

Q.  How long should voting be allowed for?

 

A.  If meddling and sabotage by the sitting government is suspected/expected, then best to allow several days or even one week for the process, with constant management of the process by the GEC, mainly to make sure that enough people are seen to be voting.  If intimidation and vote-buying is seen to be a serious threat then maybe allow voting to take place over a 3-6 month period (trickle-voting).

 

 

Q.  Who distributes the VE’s?

 

A.  This could be a local operation of the GEC – if the sitting government is judged hostile to a fair process, one of its tools will be to make it difficult or impossible to get a VE, and/or they will mix-up and/or sabotage the process of allocating VE against National ID Number.  Therefore VE’s could be distributed effectively by NGO’s against show of ID and against having the ID photo match the person who presents it.  When National ID’s also have biometrics (e.g. fingerprint) then that could be used by the VE issuing authority (VEIA) as a cross-check.  I am planning that VE’s are distributed over a 6-month period up to the election.  Ideally the staff who distribute the VE’s do not include even one in-country national.

 

 

Q.  What about lost or compromised VE’s?

 

A.  Cancel those on the computer and issue a whole new VE (a different UVN - again against National ID Card).  This should possibly be a chargeable process, so as to discourage carelessness and time-wasting.

 

 

Q.  What about intimidation to confiscate people’s VE’s, and attempts to buy people’s VE’s?

 

A.  We have excellent strategies for that, but choose not to outline them at this point in time, so as to give the bad guys more self-confidence (the strategy is actually outlined below towards the end of this document).

 

 

Q.  Technical points regarding VE’s and UVN’s?

 

A.  UVN’s do not become validated in the GEC Computer System until they are linked to a National ID Card.  Therefore there is less possibility of rogue governments to grab wads of VE’s and submit them (probably electronically and automatically) during the voting period.  For this reason, the scenario where VE’s are distributed by the GEC or by GEC-related and GEC-vetted NGO’s is probably critical to SEEV.

 

 

Q. What about backward countries like the UK which do not have National ID Cards?

 

A.  Such countries might use their postal system to distribute the VE’s.

 

 

Q. What about the Privacy of the Vote?

 

A. The SEEV concept is flexible.  It should be possible to organize polling stations with polling booths, each with its captive (tied-down) mobile phone, where voters can choose to go to vote ‘in secrecy’.  But one must realize that in many countries, and especially outside the main cities and towns, such a system would be abused by the sitting government and their local representatives to force people to vote for them.  Note that this is only a possibility, which should be decided against in any and every country where the remotest whiff of electoral fraud hangs in the air.

 

 

Q. What about the timing of the distribution of the Voters Envelopes?

 

A.  In theory (and once again, this is a sop to the conservative elections experts), the VE’s could be distributed at the polling stations by the ‘Independent’ National Electoral Commission.  But I maintain that this opens the public yet again to abuse by the sitting government; SEEV is designed specifically to remove such abuses.

 

 

Q.  How do we counter deliberate mistakes regarding constituency perpetrated by the sitting government to disenfranchise voters?

 

A.  We make it possible for voters to vote either for a party or for a candidate. The parties standing will each have a virtual candidate number, and these numbers will not be allocated to candidates as such.  Anyone voting for one of these party numbers will then automatically have their vote allocated to the candidate in the constituency to which the electoral register allocates them.  This will ensure that trickery and voter movement by the electoral commission does not disenfranchise the voter.  Additionally, the electoral register will be frozen and published several weeks before the election.  Possibly an SMS-based enquiry and response service should be set up and operated during those last few weeks after the ER Freeze so that people can confirm the candidates for whom they are entitled to vote.

 

 

Q.  What other measures should be taken by the GEC to ensure fairer elections?

 

A.  Mass issue of free low-cost short-wave transistor radios some weeks or months before the election; external broadcasts by opposition candidates on short-wave radio; commandeering of the local radio and/or TV network at certain week and daytimes by the GEC in the run-up to the election; close scrutiny of the voters roll for months before the election; putting the voters roll on the internet from Sweden; political radio and/or TV phone-in programs, etc etc etc

 

 

 Q. Can SEEV handle spoiled votes?

 

  A.  There can be one of the candidate numbers which is allocated to be a ‘virtual spoiled vote’ (VSV) – i.e. persons voting for that number will be ‘wasting’ their vote, but those VSV’s will be counted by the system and issued with the election results.  Similarly, in the event that a popular candidate is disqualified for whatever reason (e.g. imprisoned on charges of fraud or homosexuality, or killed by state agents or unknown assailants), then the GEC will probably allocate a ‘virtual candidate number’ (VCN) to that would-be candidate, and voters can vote for that person, although their vote will once again be effectively ‘wasted’;  however that candidates total of VCN Votes (VCNV)  will be announced by the GEC with the election results.   In technical terms, all VCNV’s will be subsets of VSV’s.

 

 

Q.  Who processes the election results?

 

A.  All processing is done at the GEC, with zero involvement of any and all persons with nationality and/or other connections to the country whose election is being processed.  Results are announced from the GEC through internet, television and radio linkup to the subject country.  Probably a live televised press conference is run for every election result announcement.  Only enough aggregate information is released to the government and to the people of the subject country as is deemed necessary and/or reasonable (so as to avoid revenge and/or attacks on certain towns and regions by a deposed government / political party and their militias).

 

 

Q.  Is the vote processing auditable?

 

A. Yes – the initial data file which corresponds to the numbers on the Voters’ Envelopes can be copied and stored under high security with the chosen auditors (e.g. one of the major international auditing companies such as Price Waterhouse Coopers).  The program(s) which processes the data can also be copied onto CD or DVD or external hard drive and stored similarly.  Then, the file which is the result of the distribution of the Voters’ Envelopes is also stored.  Finally, the incoming sms voting messages are stored in a giant text file, which can also be copied and given to the auditors.  The auditors can then set up the program to run the incoming sms voting messages against the Voters’ Envelope file, which should produce an exact copy of the result as announced by the Data Processing Center of the GEC.  The program(s) can also be analysed by the Auditors to ensure that there is no false code which favours any candidate or party over any other.

 

 

 Q.  Does SEEV have advantages for conflict areas?

 

 A. Most definitely – in many conflict areas, there are armed groups who are out to kill and/or maim those who dare to vote.  The act of physically going to a paper-based voting center can be literally taking one’s life in one’s hands.  SEEV eliminates that process.

 

 

Q.  Will this scheme be welcomed by 3rd world governments?

 

A.