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Section: New Software and Platforms
Belenios
Belenios - Verifiable online voting system
Keyword: E-voting
Functional Description: Belenios is an open-source online voting system that provides confidentiality and verifiability. End-to-end verifiability relies on the fact that the ballot box is public (voters can check that their ballots have been received) and on the fact that the tally is publicly verifiable (anyone can recount the votes). Confidentiality relies on the encryption of the votes and the distribution of the decryption key.
Belenios builds upon Helios, a voting protocol used in several elections. The main design enhancement of Belenios vs. Helios is that the ballot box can no longer add (fake) ballots, due to the use of credentials. Moreover, Belenios includes a practical threshold decryption system that allows splitting the decryption key among several authorities.
News Of The Year: Since 2015, it has been used by CNRS for remote election among its councils (more than 30 elections every year) and since 2016, it has been used by Inria to elect representatives in the “comités de centre” of each Inria center. In 2018, it has been used to organize about 250 elections (not counting test elections). Belenios is typically used for elections in universities as well as in associations. This goes from laboratory councils (e.g. Irisa, Cran), scientific societies (e.g. SMAI) to various associations (e.g. FFBS - Fédération Française de Baseball et Softball, or SRFA - Société du Rat Francophone et de ses Amateurs).
In 2019, a threshold encryption mode has been added that makes the system more robust to the case where (say) one trustee among three loses her part of the decryption key.