Coercion-Resistant Voting Through Anamorphic Encryption
Ruoranen, Julia (2026)
2026
Tietotekniikan DI-ohjelma - Master's Programme in Information Technology
Informaatioteknologian ja viestinnän tiedekunta - Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
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Hyväksymispäivämäärä
2026-05-22
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202605195876
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202605195876
Tiivistelmä
Elections are a cornerstone of democratic countries, representing the citizens' preferences in governance. Electronic voting systems provide several advantages compared to traditional paper-based elections, including better accessibility, efficiency, and faster result processing and computing. However, despite these benefits, electronic voting is not widely used due to challenges related to security, transparency, and trust. Digital systems are more vulnerable to large-scale cyberattacks and are more difficult to audit transparently than paper-based voting. One of the key challenges in electronic voting is vote coercion. It is a widely recognized issue, and several coercion-resistance mechanisms have been proposed, including the use of real and fake credentials, revoting, and coercion evidence. However, these approaches often have usability challenges, or they rely on assumptions that are difficult to guarantee in practice.
As a cryptographic approach, this thesis examines anamorphic encryption as a coercion-resistance method. It provides an implementation of an anamorphic e-voting system as a proof of concept and benchmarks the time and memory efficiency of the system. Additionally, three post-quantum anamorphic encryption schemes were implemented and benchmarked to view their suitability for PQ anamorphic systems. The results demonstrate that anamorphic encryption gives a relevant solution for coercion-resistance, allowing voters to produce fake proofs while preserving their true vote. However, benchmarking results show that the implementations are unrealistic in both time and memory usage for real-life deployment. These findings indicate that, while anamorphic encryption is a promising approach for coercion-resistant electronic voting, further research is required to improve its efficiency and to address open challenges such as secure anamorphic key exchange. Development in these areas is necessary to determine whether anamorphic encryption is applicable in real-world systems.
As a cryptographic approach, this thesis examines anamorphic encryption as a coercion-resistance method. It provides an implementation of an anamorphic e-voting system as a proof of concept and benchmarks the time and memory efficiency of the system. Additionally, three post-quantum anamorphic encryption schemes were implemented and benchmarked to view their suitability for PQ anamorphic systems. The results demonstrate that anamorphic encryption gives a relevant solution for coercion-resistance, allowing voters to produce fake proofs while preserving their true vote. However, benchmarking results show that the implementations are unrealistic in both time and memory usage for real-life deployment. These findings indicate that, while anamorphic encryption is a promising approach for coercion-resistant electronic voting, further research is required to improve its efficiency and to address open challenges such as secure anamorphic key exchange. Development in these areas is necessary to determine whether anamorphic encryption is applicable in real-world systems.