Vote Secrecy and Voter Feedback in Remote Voting - Can We Have Both?

The principle of secrecy is one of the most important tools to guarantee a voting process without undue influence to the voter. However, the concepts of the secret ballot and secret vote have strong ties to voting in a controlled environment in the polling station, and remote voting methods like postal voting or Internet voting need to employ special measures and approaches to achieve similar results. At the same time, limited options of observing the tallying process remotely potentially undermines the trust in remote voting. This paper looks at possible ways of giving the voter some feedback and assurance in the integrity of their vote, at the same time adhering to the freedom of voting principle. The Estonian Internet voting system is used as a model case for evaluation of a possible feedback channel architecture.