Strategies for Voter-Initiated Election Audits

Abstract

Many verifiable electronic voting systems are dependent on voter-initiated auditing. This auditing allows the voter to check the construction of their cryptographic ballot, and is essential in both gaining assurance in the honesty of the constructing device, and ensuring the integrity of the election as a whole. A popular audit approach is the Benaloh Challenge [5], which involves first constructing the complete ballot, before asking the voter whether they wish to cast or audit it. In this paper we model the Benaloh Challenge as an inspection game, and evaluate various voter strategies for deciding whether to cast or audit their ballot. We shall show that the natural strategies for voterinit..