E-Voting System Evaluation Based on the Council of Europe Recommendations: Helios Voting

Despite the claimed benefits of e-voting initiatives, wider adoption of e-voting mechanisms and implementation processes is slower than expected. Several technical, social, and cultural challenges hinder generability and applicability of e-voting. Amongst them, the evaluation and harmonization of e-voting systems, given different legal and statutory frameworks, is still an important challenge to overcome. Yet, only a few works have addressed this topic in the field. This article aims to contribute to further understanding this unexplored topic by applying a practical evaluation framework to Helios Voting, one of the most widely used e-voting tools to date. Our framework, strongly based on the technical and security requirements issued by the Council of Europe in 2017, is a valuable source of information for election officials, researchers and voters to understand the strengths and weaknesses of Helios Voting and, as a result, to improve decision-making processes regarding the type and size of elections that can be securely handled by Helios Voting. The ultimate goal of our paper is to conceptually and practically support the gradual, secure and protocolized expansion of e-voting.