How does POLYAS anonymize the voters?
To login to the POLYAS voting system, each voter needs two pieces of access data, which they receive from POLYAS by e-mail: The voter ID and a password that is valid for this election only.
The voter ID is taken from the electoral roll, while the password is generated automatically by POLYAS using secure algorithms. In the voting software POLYAS CORE 2.5.0, a successful authentication on the voting system generates a so-called token, which the voter uses to cast his/her vote. The token separates the login data from the vote, so it is impossible to infer the voter’s identity. If a voter has cast a binding vote, the information that a vote has been cast is sent to the electoral roll. The voter is now marked in the electoral roll as “Has voted”. This means that no further token can be generated for that voter, and multiple votes are excluded. Due to the spatial and logical separation of the electoral roll and ballot box, it is impossible to infer the voter’s identity. This guarantees anonymous voting in accordance with the electoral principles.
In POLYAS CORE 3.0, voters are anonymized in a similar way to that in POLYAS CORE 2.5.0 described above: Here, a key pair consisting of a private key and a public key is generated for each election. The public key is used to encrypt the ballot papers during the election. Ballot papers can only be decrypted with the appropriate private key. Here too, it is impossible to infer the voter’s identity, since the identity of the voter is anonymized and separated from the vote.
Voting secrecy for your voters is preserved with online voting from POLYAS.