Our Voting System INFO 1140 Class Project Cornell University Monday, October 24, 2011 Monday, October 24, 11

Things to Keep In Mind Modeled with the U.S. system in mind Will use U.S. terminology Considered problems U.S. government experiences All aspects can be ported to other countries’ systems, with minor tweaks Monday, October 24, 11

Voter Authentication Monday, October 24, 11

Voter Authentication Required Credentials: Social Security Number 2 randomly-chosen sentences 5 ≤ num words ≤ 10 Repository of sentences to choose from built by taking all the sentences from every book in a large collection (e.g. The Library of Congress) and compiling them If quotations exist in a sentence, the inner sentence (within the quotations) is used, the rest is discarded Accounting for Human Error 5 failed attempts per SSN per IP before the SSN is shut out of the system; 100 total failed attempts per IP All sentences stored in a government database, 2 randomly selected and sent to voter Misspellings Monday, October 24, 11

Where Can I Vote? Anywhere with a Computer Available The nature of our auth system allows for this Can even vote on your smartphone’s browser, as long as it supports SSL connections Voting Station On computers with or without touch screens In paper Requires voter to tell Voting Officer her two sentences and SSN VO then prints out paper ballot (SCANTRON), hands to voter to fill out Takes back and feeds through scanner which then inputs the values into the database Monday, October 24, 11

User Interface fetched from google.com Monday, October 24, 11

Paper Interface SCANTRON-like form with bubbles #2 pencils provided fetched from google.com Monday, October 24, 11

Computer Interface Radio-button/checkbox interface “Continue Without Voting” button “Next 㱺” on bottom right; “⾨ Previous” on bottom left “None of the above” radio button at bottom of list Confirmation page at end of voting process Write in option text-to-speech; headphones available at voting station Monday, October 24, 11

Demo... Monday, October 24, 11

Post-Vote Mechanics Print out physical paper receipt at government facility with date, votes Redundant databases in key, high security locations in each state capital city (with national backups at Fort Knox and Pentagon) Synced every second, high capacity Web security: SSL encryption 128-bit, assume connection and network are secure (technicalities outside scope of class) For development: test like crazy (TDD) Monday, October 24, 11

Who’s In Charge? The IRS: Internal Revenue Service Idea: “If you don’t pay taxes, you can’t vote.” The IRS keeps track of tax- payers, generates sentence combinations for them only fetched from google.com Monday, October 24, 11

Anticipating Your Questions What about biographies? We decided that this system, being on the computer, would make it easy for voters to open another browser window and search for more information on the candidates. Is there a time limit on voting? Voting will occur on one day only, but voters can take as long as they wish to vote, provided it is before 11:59pm on voting day. Monday, October 24, 11

Thank You Monday, October 24, 11