SEAS, the Secure E-voting Applet System, is a protocol for implementing a secure and private system for polling over computer networks. SEAS protocol is based closely on Senus, a well known e-voting protocol, which requires only two servers, namely a validator and a tallier. However Sensus suffers of a vulnerability that allows one of the entities involved in the election process to cast its own votes in place of those that abstain from the vote. SEAS is a portable and flexible system that preserves the lightness of Sensus , but it avoids the mentioned weakness.
SEAS purpose is satisfying the needs of small communities of users, say up to dozens of thousands. Several private and public organizations fall into this spectrum of patterns. Because of the considered relatively small scenario, we thought it right to adopt a protocol requiring the minimum number of modules. Our choice is justified both by the will to implement a low cost system and by the awareness that in an environment like the depicted one it is not always possible to locate many central facilities while simultaneously avoiding the risk of collusion among them. Each voter belonging to the community is assumed to have the access to either a local or global net devoted to election activities and to be the owner of a digital certificate.
SEAS is implemented through three modules:
the pollster P, willing to ballot in a secure and private way. The pollster is a set of hardware/software modules through which a voter can cast its ballot. Throughout the paper, the terms voters and pollsters will be used interchangeably;
the validator V, a server that checks the eligibility of the pollster P and the uniqueness of the pollster submission and then validates the submitted vote;
the tallier T, a server devoted to count all the validated votes.
Finally a prototype implementation of SEAS based on Java applet technology and XML has been implemented.
F. Baiardi, A. Falleni, R. Granchi, F. Martinelli, M. Petrocchi, A.
Vaccarelli. SEAS, an improvement of the Sensus protocol: design and
implementation 4 - th EUROPEAN CONFERENCE E-COMM-LINE 2003, Bucharest,
September 2003