Civitas and the Real World: Problems and Solutions from a Practical Point of View

In the past, researchers have proposed manyvoting schemes that satisfy a wide range of security properties. These schemes often rely on strong trust assumptionsand do not consider the voter sufficiently, which currentlyrenders them inappropriate for usage in real-world elections. In this paper we focus on the voting scheme Civitas, whichfeatures provably strong security properties, such as end-toend verifiability and coercion-resistance. We identify the strongtrust assumptions and usability weaknesses of the scheme, which currently prevent its usage in real-world elections. Basedon these results, we show how most of these strong trustassumptions can be implemented, e.g., by using eID cards inorder to overcome Civitas´ most critical usability problem, namely credential handling. Together with a voter-processdescription and a user-interface, we pave the way for the useof Civitas in real-world elections.