An Election Manager for the sElect e-voting system (https://github.com/escapin/sElect.git). It allows one to easily create and manage secure and verifiable elections powered by sElect.
The system has been developed and deployed on Ubuntu Server 16.04.3 LTS.
The election manager provides a web interface allowing one to create, customize, and remove elections powered by the sElect e-voting system on a single server instance.
The web interface displays a list of elections. Each election has an unique electionID, a given title, and a starting/ending time. Moreover, each election is either open - the election is currently running and eligible voters can cast their votes - or closed - the election is over and the final result is ready and available (not responding indicates a problem communicating with the server collecting the ballots).
The development environment can be created with
make devenvIt creates a locally runnable configuration for the web interface, it
downloads the sElect system and creates its development
environment. This operation can be reverted by make devclean.
The election manager and the nginx sessions used to handle the elections created can be started by:
./run.shWhen starting the server for the first time, the user will be prompted to enter a master password used to manage all the elections (even those protected by an user-password).
localhost:8443.The nginx sessions created can be stopped by
./stopNginx.shThe web interface contains the following options to manage elections:
Create Election allows one to create customized elections: Attributes such as title, description, starting/ending time, election question, and list of choices can be set. Moreover, two more options can be selected:
Publish list of voters: This option shows the email addresses of the voters who have voted in this election (but not what they have voted for), once the election is closed.
User providing verification code: The voter will provide part of the verification code to check whether her vote has been properly counted. In this way, not even the voting booth needs to be trusted.
Set up Mock Election creates a mock election with predetermined settings (such as title, question, list of choices, and so on), which started one day ago and will end in two days. In this setting, some mock voters already casted their ballots.
Close Election closes the selected election. It requires password confirmation, if the password was set.
Remove Election removes the selected election. If the election result needs to be saved on the server, the election must have been previously closed. It requires password confirmation, if the password was set.
A) When the election is open, Invite Voters to Vote shows a link to the voting booth web-page. To allow eligible voters to cast their ballot, invite them to visit this web-page.
B) Once the election is closed, Check Election Result shows a link to the same voting booth web-page. To allow voters to check the election result, invite them to visit this web-page, namely the same web-page they used to vote.
This act triggers a fully automated verification procedure investigating whether the voter's choice has been actually counted.
Besides using the web interface, it is possible to create fully customized elections by providing a properly configured election manifest and, optionally, a file containing a list of confidential voters which only the Collecting Server has access to. In the Election Manifest, the URI and the public/private keys of the servers may not be specified: these fields are set/overwritten by the python scripts creating the election with the proper servers URI and cryptographic keys.
In the CustomizedElection folder, a fully customized election can be created with
node createCustomizedElection.js -m <path/to/manifest.json>
-p <pwdToCloseTheElection>
[-v <path/to/confidentialVoters.json>]
[-s <subdomain>] [-h] [-r]where,
-m <path/to/manifest.json>
Provide the election manifest file.
-p <pwdToCloseTheElection>
Set password to close and remove the election to <pwdToCloseTheElection>.
-s <subdomain>
Optional: instead of using the Election Lookup String (ELS) in the URI, the election will be
displayed at localhost:[port]/<subdomain> if the system run in localhost,
<subdomain>.serverdomain otherwise.
-v <path/to/confidentialVoters.json
Optional: instead of making the list of voters' email addresses publicly available
in the election manifest, provide them only to the collecting server.
-h
Optional: the election has to stay hidden from the ElectionHandler web interface, if any.
-r
Optional: the user has to provide part of the verification code which will later be used to verify
that her vote has been properly counted.In the CustomizedElection folder, a fully customized election can be removed with
node removeCustomizedElection.js -e <atLeast7charOfElectionID> -p <pwdInsertedWhenElectionCreated> [-h]where,
-e <atLeast7charOfElectionID>
The electionID of the election to be removed (at least 7 digits of the electionID are required).
-p <pwdInsertedWhenElectionCreated>
The password inserted at creation time, which can also be used to close the election before
the pre-set closing time.
-h
Optional: the election to be removed is among the elections not shown in the election handler
web interface, if any (we refer to such elections as 'hidden elections').createCustomElection.sh might interfere with an election created
by server.js if they are created at the same time.