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Designing and developing secure protocol for mobile voting Abhishek Kumar
1,Ashok Kumar Srivastava
2
1- Junior Scientist, Computer Division, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, Chattar
Manzil Palace, MG Marg, Lucknow-226001
2- Senior Principal Scientist, Computer Division, CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute,
Chattar Manzil Palace, MG Marg, Lucknow-226001
CSIR-CDRI Communication Number: 8198
ABSTRACT
In recent years, a drastic fall down is being noticed in the Indian general election’s voting
turnaround. Problem is becoming serious with the non-availability of a way to let voters cast
votes who are residing outside their election-areas. The remote voting procedure for NRI’s
and Indian army is also not showing significant improvement. Somewhere the issues lie in
ease of usage and somewhat lack of trust of current voting procedure. This article tries to
solve this issue with the design and development of mobile voting protocol which is not only
very easy to use but is also robust, secure and trusted. In this article, we have focused on
designing a secure and globally trusted protocol to enable Indian citizens (or any other
country’s citizens who follows this protocol) to cast vote in their respective country’s election
via their GSM Mobile Phones from anywhere in the globe irrespective of their physical
location. Apart from this, the motive of author is also to extend the usage of information
technology to a scheme of Green-Election (Paperless election), addresses the issues of
voting-problem in remote, disturb and sensible areas, and to suit the requirement of today’s
generation who, due to several problems, usually finds it difficult to go for manual vote
casting.
Keywords: Mobile Voting; Protocol for Mobile voting; Secure Mobile voting.
Nomenclature
EVM = Electronic Voting Machine
NRI = Non Resident Indian
SMS = Short Message Service
UID = Unique Identification
UIDAI = Unique Identification Authority of India (AADHAR)
GSM = Global System for Mobile Communications
1. Introduction
In democratic society, voting is used to collect and reflect people’s opinion and making a
trusted and accepted committee of representatives for successfully running the country.
Currently, voting is being conducted in centralized or distributed voting booths. Voters have
to present personally at the voting booth to cast their votes under the supervision of
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authorized election commission members. For a variety of reasons, voters may not be able to
attend voting booths physically but want to cast vote remotely. Accepted way of remote
voting is Postal Voting (for NRI) and Proxy Voting (For Army), but it lacks proper
authentication and involves a time-consuming procedure. This area needs to be explored
properly due to following reasons: The current voting procedure is not very efficient and
mostly probe to human error. Allegations keep being raised and there are enough ways for
EVM tampering (Hari K. Prasad, 2010), (Tandayoshi Kohno, 2004), booth capturing, vote
tampering, vote counting mistakes, violence and many more.
The youth and the maximum voter portions of today are moving away from voting. Reasons
are many such as: they find it difficult to manage time; out of their busy schedule for voting,
they don’t find any easy way of voting and the current way of remote voting is not very easy
to use, lacks trust and also allowed for very specific group of people. The same problem is
being faced by NRIs and Military men, the various remote voting ways were mainly targeted
for this section only; Voting Via Embassies(for NRI) and Proxy Voting (from military
persons); but they are not able to utilize it fully. The main reason remains as lack of
authentication, flexibility and ease of use of current remote voting procedures. The voters
who is residing outside their voting areas, also fails to cast their votes due to current not very
effective voting procedures. The voting in remote and sensitive area always remains a
problem and challenge. Major portion of people from this area fails to use right to vote.
Taking example of Indian state Bihar which suffers from NAXALS and seen violence in
election, the voting turnaround has decreased significally. In Bihar the Voting turnaround for
Vidhna Sabha Election has fallen from 53.7 %( 1977) to 45.9 %( 2005 Nov). Politically
disturbing areas like J&K also seeing constant reduction in voting turnaround.
The overall effect of this trend is that the voting turnaround of Indian general election keeps
falling drastically. Apart from this, there are many more reasons to look forward for a mobile
voting as Reduced Costs, Greater accessibility for the disabled, Flexibility. (Manish Kumar)
Table 1: Voting percentage in India’s Lok Sabha elections
General Election Year Male Female Total
1st 1952 - - 61.2
2nd 1957 - - 62.2
3rd 1962 63.31 46.63 55.42
4th 1967 66.73 55.48 61.33
5th 1971 60.90 49.11 55.29
6th 1977 65.63 54.91 60.49
7th 1980 62.16 51.22 56.92
8th 1984 68.18 58.60 63.56
9th 1989 66.13 57.32 61.95
10th 1991 61.58 51.35 56.93
11th 1996 62.06 53.41 57.94
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12th 1998 1998 57.88 61.97
13th 1999 63.97 55.64 59.99
14th 2004 52.65 44.65 48.74
(Source: http://www.indian-elections.com/india-statistics.html, accessed on Oct 19, 2011)
In 2009, general election has a voting percentage of 56. 97% (Source: Wikipedia: India
General Election, 2009)
Hence, there is a great room for a remote voting protocol which is easy, transparent and most
importantly secure. In this article, we have worked on a protocol development for secure and
easy remote voting procedure via GSM mobile. Though GSM itself has inbuilt security
features (Yang Feng, 2006), (Manish Kumar), this protocol further extends it for a secure
mobile voting. We can also extend proposed protocol to define another inherent protocol/s for
a secure online voting.
1.1 Protocol Description
In current voting procedure, every valid voter has to register themselves to Election
Commission of India and get their voter ID-Card. This ID-card is used as photo identification
while casting vote. This protocol adds an extra field to the present Voter ID-Card namely:
UID (The AADHAR UID) (Unique Identification Authority of India, Planning
Commission).While registering to election commission, user will register his/her mobile
number. Firstly, the user has to activate given mobile number to enable mobile voting.
The mobile voting activation procedure for voters would be as follow:
After proper verification, a secret number will be sent on the user’s registered mobile number.
After getting this number, user has to log-in to the Indian Election Commission’s online
mobile-voting activation gateway and provide following information:
1. The Secret Number
2. The UID as on voter’s ID-card
3. The Voter ID as on voter’s ID-card
4. Mobile number on which this information is sent
This will be a single time activity which has to be done. An automated verification will be
done on back end side and on success; the number will be activated for mobile voting. Also a
secret key will be passed to the mobile user (this will be used to decrypt the secured
encrypted SMS from election commission). The user also needs to download and install a
small cryptography application (used to decrypt and view secure SMS from election
commission).The detailed description of this protocol is elaborated down onwards.
2. Voting via this protocol
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If a user is subscribed and allowed to cast mobile vote, on election day of his/her area, user
will get an SMS from Election Commission of India, having a list of candidates’ name along
with their parties’ name and parties’ symbol’s name. User has to simply reply to this SMS to
cast the vote.
The Election commission’s SMS format would be:
<Sequel Number> <Candidates’ Name> <Candidates’ Parties’ Name> <Candidates’ Parties’
symbol’s Name>
Secret Key : <Highly robust randomly generated 12 characters length alphanumeric key>
So, On Election Day, user will get an Election commission’s SMS like:
1. Hira Yadav (INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS) (HAND)
2. Prabhu Lal (BJP) (LOTUS)
3. Priyanka Aggarwal (BSP) (ELEPHANT)
4. Vikash Yadav (NIRDALIYA) (AEROPLAN)
Secret key: XX8945893DFR
To cast vote, user has to simply reply to this SMS in a predefined format. The reply format is:
<SECRETKEY><SPACE>IM<SPACE><UID><SPACE>IS<SPACE><NUMERIC DIGIT>
The extended full format of this SMS is: <Secret Key> I am <UID> is selecting <Candidates’ numeric digit>
Ex: XX8945893DFR IM 98XDUIDR45T IS 4
User will get an acknowledgement SMS on the same registered number after vote acceptance.
2.1 Backend architecture and working of protocol
The backend of this protocol has one highly secured centralized database with three tables:
Database_Name: Electorate_Information_Database
Table 2: Electorate_Information_Table
UID //UID of the voter as on AADHAR UID CARD
Voter_ID //Voter ID of the voter
Voter_Name // Voter name
Father_Name //Voter’s father name
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Permanent_Address // Voter’s registered permanent address
Registered_Mobile_Number //Voter’s registered mobile number for mobile voting
Election_Area //Voter’s election area (which area voter is allowed to vote for)
Gender //Voter’s gender
Date_Of_Birth //Voter’s Date of birth
Date_Election_Commission_Registration //Date voter registered him/her self to election commission of India
Date_Mobile_voting_registration //Date voter registered him/her self for mobile voting
Date_Mobile_voting_activation //Date on which voter mobile information is validated and voter allowed for mobile
voting
Mobile_Voting_Allowed //Whether the voter is allowed for mobile voting or not.
Usage:
This table will be used for any usual query and fetch/update voter’s basic information. This
table can be published online on log-in basis for voter’s to counter check their information.
Election Area field will be used to decide, when user has to sent voting SMS.
Table 2: Electorate_Cryptography_Key
UID // UID of the voter as on AADHAR UID CARD
Secret_Symmetric_Key //The voter’s specific symmetric key used for Election commission’s secure SMS
encryption and decryption
Usage:
This is highly secured database’s table and contains the symmetric secret key which will be
used to encrypt and decrypt the SMS which will be sent to voters for casting mobile vote.
This table’s access can be restricted to only few people for security concerns.
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Table 3: Electorate_Voting_Status
UID //UID of the voter as on AADHAR UID CARD
Voting_Status // This is the field which provides information that whether user has yet
casted vote or not
Voting_Date_and_Time // Date and Time when user casted vote
Voting_Mode // which mode was used to cast vote “Mobile Mode” or “Polling Booth Mode (User manually casted vote by going to
polling booth)”
Secret_PRNG_Number //12 characters length secret Pseudo Random Number for carrying acknowledgment functionalities
Usage
This table will provide information regarding the current voting status of a voter and also
provide many other fields for problem shooting like at what Date/Time vote has been casted,
via which mode (mobile voting or voter casted vote from polling booth) vote has been casted,
and also keep the a secret PRNG number for acknowledgment purpose. This table will be
updated as soon as voter will cast vote via any mean and will be used by polling booth’s
officer and the mobile voting server to query/update voter’s current voting status. The 4 fields
of this table(Voting Status, Date and Time, Voting Mode, Secret PRNG number) are volatile
in nature and will be reset every time a new election helds in that area. Apart from this, this
protocol also includes a small portable device which will be given to all of the Election camp
officers’. The prototype of this small portable device is:
Figure1: Prototype of the small portable device for checking and updating voter’s voting
status
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This portable device will be used to make a secured connection and query the centralized
election commission’s database regarding the current voting status of a user. This machine
will consist of following parts:
An alphanumeric keypad for punching voter’s UID
Three punch buttons namely: Query (query election commission’s centralized database
regarding the voting status of voter), Vote casted (to update the voting status of voter in the
centralized database after allowing for vote casting), and Reset (to reset the display of the
machine and reset its functionalities and flush any old data)
Two display panels: One for viewing the UID while punching the same and second for
viewing the output of the query
Before allowing any voter to cast vote, the pooling booth officer will punch his/her UID on
the machine and press query. If the user has casted vote by any other means previously, the
same was updated on the database and will be reflected on the machine. However if the user
has not casted any vote, the same will be shown as the output and the user will be allowed to
cast vote after carrying proper formalities. Parallel an update will also be sent to the
centralized database regarding this action via the same machine, to stop voter doing a re-
voting. If the user has already casted the vote, the output panel will show result as: YES, else
the output panel will show result as: NO and polling officer can update the database
regarding voter’s voting status by pressing button: “Vote Casted”, which will immediately
update the centralized database.
3. Challenges and Solutions
Challenges and scenarios which have to be addressed in this protocol.
3.1 Users’ should not be allowed to cast vote more than once at any cost
There are 2 scenario of this case:
Voter casts vote physically by going to Polling booth: In this scenario after doing a proper
verification via the provided machine, the polling officer will allow the user to cast the vote
and will update the same to the election commission centralized database immediately
Voter casts mobile vote: In this scenario, as soon as the vote reaches election commission’s
server, a backend checking will be done with the centralized database whether voter has
casted vote previously or not via any other mean. If found a case of re-voting, the vote will be
immediately discarded, else, the vote will be accepted and the user will get a confirmation
SMS on the registered mobile number. The backend database will be update immediately to
reflect the latest voting status of the voter
3.2 Security
This is the area which has to be put under special consideration. There are many levels of
security checks designed for making this protocol robust and secure.
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3.2.1 Secure SMS
The SMS sent to user will be secured SMS. The SMS will be encrypted with a robust
symmetric encryption algorithm with a secret user’s specific symmetric key (which was
already passed to the user while activating mobile number) and digitally signed. The motive
is that even though if the SMS will get tapped, the intruder will never be able to decrypt the
SMS and thus would never be able to cast a fake vote. On receiving the secured SMS, voter
will open this via the application he/she downloaded from the Election commission’s web
site and after providing secret decryption key, voter will be able to see and reply to the SMS.
Either Election commission can develop own proprietary SMS cryptography application or
can use any robust third party solution.
3.2.2 Acknowledgment
This protocol will have a full functional acknowledgment feature, to ensure that the voting
has been casted via authorized person. If we see the format of the SMS: <Sequel Number>
<Candidates’ Name> <Candidates’ Parties’ Name> <Candidates’ Parties’ symbol>
Secret Key : <Highly robust randomly generated alphanumeric key>
The <SECRET KEY> is the one which is used to manage this acknowledgement. This secret
number will be a generated by a highly robust PRNG (Pseudo Random number generator
algorithm) and will be embedded in the SMS. Due to secure SMS, the message will be
decrypted once it will reach the right voter’s phone. After decryption the voter will use the
same number in voting reply:
<SECRET_KEY><SPACE>IM<SPACE><UID><SPACE>IS<SPACE><NUMERIC
DIGIT>
This ensures the acknowledgment over the voting. This also stops voter to vote until unless
an SMS is particularly sent to mobile by the election commission server. This feature can also
be extended to black-list mobile numbers in special cases, because user won’t be allowed to
SMS vote until unless he/she gets SMS with secret number on his/her mobile number.
3.2.3 Add-on checking
On receiving the mobile vote, the server will ensure that the vote has been sent from the same
mobile number on which the SMS was sent to stop any burglary in the mobile voting.
However this Add-on checking can be dropped to provide voters a flexible voting mechanism
where they would be allowed to vote from any mobile once they get voting SMS on their
registered mobile number.
3.2.4 Mobile Stolen Scenario
There are many ways to handle this scenario:
User can contact the election commission’s help center and after proper verification, request
to block the number can be accepted.
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User can request election commission’s help center to register a new mobile number for
mobile-voting.
As the user is registered with mobile number not the SIM CARD number, as soon as the user
gets same number again from his/her respective mobile service company, he/she can do a
mobile voting. Moreover, as the mobile voting format consists UID of the user, which is
again a privately known number, the chances of using stolen mobile number for fake voting
is very less.
3.2.5 Miscellaneous checks
The mobile voting will be allowed as per Indian standard time and the voter won’t be allowed
to use mobile vote once the normal voting time of the area ended. Only the polling booth
manager will be allowed to query the election commission’s centralized database via the
provided machine and update the same (regarding the voting status of the voter). All other
users will simply cast votes and in a way simply updates the database.
Figure 2: The overview of the mobile voting protocol’s architecture
4. Working architecture of Mobile-Voting
4.1 Outside working architecture
The outside working architecture of this protocol is:
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4.2 Flow Chart demonstration for Mobile-voting at various stages
Figure 3: Action flow chart for the automated election commission server for handling
Mobile-Voting
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Figure 4: Action flow chart for voters casting mobile votes
Figure 5: Action flow chart for polling booth’s officer for allowing a manual voting after
checking the voter’s voting status for stopping any burglary
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5. Conclusion
In our study we have found that there is a great scope of mobile voting in the current social
scenario and the above proposed protocol not only provides a starting milestone in this
direction but also opens a new room for further exploration and extending the proposed
protocol for practical usage.
6. References
1. Tandayoshi Kohno, Adam Stubblefield, Aviel D.Rubin, Dan S. Wallach (February
27,2004), “Analysis of an Electronic Voting System”, pp 12-14
2. Yang Feng, Siaw-Lynn Ng, Scarlet Schwiderski-Grosche ( June 26, 2006), “An
Electronic Voting System Using GSM Mobile Technology”, pp 2-3
3. Hari K. Prasad, J.Alex Halderman, Rop Gongriijp, Scott Wolchok, Eric Wustrow,
Arun Kankipati, Sai Krishnan Sakhamuri, Vasavya Yagati (April 29,2010) , “Security
Analysis of India’s Electronic Voting Machines”
4. Unique Identification Authority of India, Planning Commission, Government of India
(July 7, 2010), “Aadhar Handbook for Registrars”, Version 1-July 2010, pp 3-5
5. Manish Kumar, T.V. Suresh Kumar , M. Hanumanthappa, D Evangelin Geetha,
“Secure Mobile Based Voting System”, pp 324-326
6. India Elections Statistics, http://www.indian-elections.com/india-statistics.html,
accessed 19 October, 2011.
7. Wikipedia, Indian General Election 2009 , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/indian_
general_election,_ 2009, accessed on 19 October , 2011.
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