Broadcasts of printing that were observed by the participants in our study
Online elections come with security challenges since digital votes do not produce physical audit trails that are easily verifiable. We present and investigate a hybrid online voting system that combines the benefits of voting from home via the internet with those of physical ballots, such as risk-limiting audits and verifiability. After voting online, the system generates a tracking code and a physical printout -- either paper or 3D-printed -- of the encrypted vote that can be visually verified by the voters through live video-broadcasts. Through an online experiment (N=150), we compared hybrid voting with paper and 3D-printed votes to a baseline (digitally stored votes), investigating perceived trust, UX, usability, and security readiness. Among our results, we show that paper printouts enhance trust without negatively impacting UX. 3D-printouts enhance perceived privacy, yet impact usability and UX. We conclude with recommendations and practical considerations to inform the implementation of hybrid online voting schemes.
Research Team
- Karola Marky
- Nina Gerber
- Henry John Krumb
- Mohamed Khamis
- Max Mühlhäuser
Screenshots of our prototypes
Download high resolution screenshots of the implemented prototypes that we used in the user study here:
Our Research Lab
Members of the SIRIUS Research Lab contributed to this research. To learn more about our lab's work, please visit: https://mkhamis.github.io//mkhamis/
