Bingo Voting - The Trusted Random Number Generator

The Trusted Random Number Generator

The secrecy of the vote, the fact that the printed receipt does not reveal how a vote was cast, depends on the numbers generated in the voting booth being sufficiently random that they cannot be identified.

To ensure that voters have confidence in the randomness of the numbers generated in the booth, the authors of the Bingo voting method suggest that a simple, transparent random number generator be used, such as a mechanical "bingo" number generator, the kind with numbered balls inside a spinning cage (hence the method's name). Sensors could be used to read the generated number and pass it to the voting machine. Such a solution would have high voter trust but might be impractical. In a real-life test, a student parliament election, the authors used modified smart card readers as the random number generators. One of the authors makes the point that a separate random number generator can be more effectively protected from manipulation than can a voting machine.

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