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BOB: a Basic On line Ballot box [1]
First things first: Electronic voting is a thorny topic, and unavoidably so. Please think very carefully about the risks involved, and definitely do not assume that we've done so for you.
The BOB system is designed to be an electronic version of a ballot box for Single Transferable Voting elections.
Vote counting can be done for you, if you enable the option for running the results through an OpenSTV count.
The BOB system is intended to be used in a context where people will verify that their votes were recorded correctly after the ballot: thus the software itself cannot cause an undetectable manipulation of the election's result (although this approach introduces other potential problems, as discussed below).
We hope this software might be useful to you, but as the GPL says, this code doesn't come with any warranties.
This software is primarily being maintained for use within the CUSU online voting system - https://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/elections/system/ .
- The returning officer and anyone with access to the webserver, including read access to its logs, will know the times at which votes were cast and may therefore be able to break privacy to some extent.
- The plain-text emails used to return receipts to voters and to the RO are vulnerable to interception. Read access to mailserver logs is also a possible privacy leak. Election officials may wish to disable the email receipts if this concerns them.
- The use of unique anonymous tokens to identify voters opens the system to coercion and vote-selling. There is essentially no way of fixing this without breaking more important properties such as usability and verifiability.
- Further discussion of the risks and threats involved with BOB voting are included within the documentation in the distribution files. It is up to you to decide whether you are willing to take on these risks.
- David Eyers - http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~dme26/ - wrote the core electronic voting system workflow code
- Martin Lucas-Smith - particularly added extra checks and balances, administration, configuration and installation support, and removed Perl installation stage
- David Turner (@cl.cam)
- Simon Hopkins (@gradunion.cam)
- Robert Whittaker (previously @gradunion.cam)
Installation is guided by the BOB system itself, so all you need to do is:
- Download a release file.
- Decompress the release into a web-accessible folder: if working on a command line, a directory BOB will be created in your current working directory.
- Point your browser to your webserver's URL for the directory created above.
- Follow the directions provided until your BOB installation is ready.
The code is licensed under the version 2 of the GPL.