Secure, Accessible, Virtual Voting Infrastructure (SAVVI): Reducing Barriers for Disabled and Overseas Voters

We describe a way to deploy a secured ballot return for overseas, vision, or dexterity-impaired voters. SAVVI is a secure, accessible, virtual voting infrastructure. It uses multiple communication channels with synchronized multi–factor authentication, encryption, and hashing to preserve privacy, confidentiality, and vote integrity. Our usability goal is to supply voters easy access to a hardened system that will present secure instances of their familiar browser and email clients. A key to its viability is synchronizing authentication through two low-tech verifications such as phone calls. This strives to enhance security and usability for remote voting by mimicking best practices for in-person polling place procedures. Other more standard cryptographic measures include layered encryption and dynamically provisioning a secure virtual container–a virtual voting machine (VVM)-to process each ballot. In aggregate, the design of SAVVI seeks to allow remote voting while reducing difficulty for the voter, programming complexity for the election administrator, and material procurement for the voting authority.