Trust Through Explainability in Verifiable Online Voting Systems

Project Description

Since the beginning of the pandemic, online voting systems have been increasingly discussed and used in secret elections and polls. On the one hand, the question is raised as to the technical and organizational trustworthiness of the systems used (i.e., how the security of these systems is assessed in the course of an evaluation of their properties) and, on the other hand, as to how the voters’ trust in these systems (and ultimately the outcome) is influenced and what role explainability plays in this context (i.e., to what extent voters understand the functionality and/or properties). To this end, we will analyze the academic literature and, where appropriate, political-medial discourse in the following contexts:

1. studies on voter trust in online elections;
2. statements on trustworthiness in the security context (properties/assumptions as well as methods, e.g., cryptographic proofs, formal methods, user studies) in general, but especially in the context of online elections;
3. relationship between different forms of explainability and trust in systems;
4. current discussions and approaches to the conceptualization of trust with regard to institutions, actors, citizens, and technology as a category also for the design and governance of technology fields, here using the example of online elections.

The goals of this project are a networking of the two topics Engineering Secure Systems and Knowledge for Action in the Helmholtz program Engineering Digital Futures (within the research field information) as well as an impulse for special research questions in the context of technical-organizational trustworthiness and influences on trust in online voting systems, particularly concerning the role of explainability.

People

Lead

Name	Title	Phone	Email	Institution
Melanie Volkamer	Prof. Dr.	+49 721 608-45045	melanie.volkamer1783453120Xfd4∂kit.edu	AIFB
Bernhard Beckert	Prof. Dr.	+49 721 608-44025	beckert260794593Xfd4∂kit.edu	KASTEL
Linda Nierling	Dr.	+49 721 608-22509	linda.nierling1322936381Xfd4∂kit.edu	ITAS

Staff

Name	Title	Phone	Email	Institution
Reinhard Heil	M.A.	+49 721 608-26815	reinhard.heil1403416470Xfd4∂kit.edu	ITAS
Michael Kirsten	Dr.	+49 721 608-45648	kirsten1911586629Xfd4∂kit.edu	KASTEL
Jascha Bareis	M.A.	+49 721 608-24616	jascha.bareis707876651Xfd4∂kit.edu	ITAS

Affiliates

Name	Title	Phone	Email	Institution
Armin Grunwald	Prof. Dr.	+49 721 608-22500	armin.grunwald805443428Xfd4∂kit.edu	ITAS
Torsten Fleischer	Dipl.-Phys.	+49 721 608-24571	torsten.fleischer1461398318Xfd4∂kit.edu	ITAS

Events

Title	Speaker	Date
Kick-Off Meeting for the Launch of the Project	Project members and investigators	March 09, 2022
Talk on Usability and Security of Verifiable Online-Voting Systems	Prof. Dr. Melanie Volkamer	April 27, 2022
Talk on Formal Verification of Voting Systems	Dr. Michael Kirsten	May 11, 2022
Talk on the Sociotechnical Construction of Trust (and Distrust) in Internet Voting	Prof. Ph.D. David Dueñas-Cid	May 25, 2022
Talk on Trust	Reinhard Heil	June 01, 2022
Talk on Explanations and Explainability	Reinhard Heil	June 29, 2022
Project Workshop with International Participation	Project members, investigators, and guest Prof. Dr. Oksana Kulyk	July 15, 2022
Civil Dialogue on Online Elections: Blessing or Curse for Democracy?	Dr. Michael Kirsten, Jascha Bareis, and Reinhard Heil	September 15/16, 2022

Publications

2022

Michael Kirsten, Melanie Volkamer, and Bernhard Beckert Why is Online Voting Still Largely a Black Box? First International Workshop on Election Infrastructure Security (EIS 2022) in conjunction with ESORICS 2022: European Symposium on Research in Computer Security