Securing Abstention in an Electronic Legislature

The reasons for developing an electronic legislature (e-legislature) include: an improved legislature, increasing the constituent´s access to the legislator, improving participation in government and providing our goverment with a mobile distributed legislature that will be able to continue to meet even in the face of some drastic activity like terrorism. The essence of a legislature is political and consequently its members will certainly act in such a way. Thus one must assume that legislators would take advantage of the lack of physical presence in a legislature if it was not secured. In [IFIP TC6/TC11 Joint Working Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS´99)], [Verifiable democracy a protocol to secure an Perspectives] an electronic legislation scheme was proposed that secured the government from malicious behavior of legislators. The protocol described in [IFIP TC6/TC11 Joint Working Conference on Communications and Multimedia Security (CMS´99)], [Verifiable democracy a protocol to secure an Perspectives] provided only minimal legislative voting options, to create a realistic e-legislature one must support all likely functions. Most legislatures allow their members to abstain. The process of introducing abstention into an e-legislature can be formative especially in the case when the legislature passes statutes by simple majority. Here we discuss how to secure an e-legislature which supports abstention.