Verifiable Classroom Voting Feng Hao School of Computing Science Newcastle University Learning and Teaching Seminar (13 Nov, 2012)

Background UTLSEC innovation project (Jun-Aug, 2012) – Aim: verifiable classroom voting based on using smart phones as voting clients – By comparison, TurningPoint classroom voting system is not verifiable. – TurningPoint also relies on using proprietary hardware for voting clients and server

Overview of our system Publicly verifiable without having to trust admin/teacher Students use their own devices to vote Voting can happen at anywhere as long as Internet is available Web server Voting clients (iPhones, Android phones etc) Internet

Demo Three ways to vote – Android phone/tablet: search for “Newcastle University eVoting”in Google play and install the app – iPhone/iPad: search for “Newcastle University eVoting” in the app store and install the app – All other smart phones, laptops, Visit To participate in voting, try – Session ID: 48 – Passcode: 1234

Verifiable classroom voting We believe it is the first such in the world – State-of-the-art verifiable e-voting technologies all require trustworthy authorities to do the tallying – Unrealistic to find such authorities in classroom voting The core technology underneath our solution – Self-enforcing e-voting (Hao, Kreeger, 2010) – Goes beyond the current state-of-the-art – Ground-breaking nature recognized by the recent award of 2012 ERC Starting Grant (1.5m euros)

Acknowledgements Hard work by two students over summer Mr Carlton Shepherd – Currently a CS Stage 3 student – Developed the Android app Dr Dylan Clarke – Currently an RA – Developed the iPhone app and web server

Thank you