voting via internet

Polyas, Germany’s first legally binding online voting system, was developed by Micromata GmbH for organisations, associations and societies.

Polyas has got huge advantages: Through this voting system you increase voter participation and you create a stronger bond with the members of your organisation. Plus, you offer your members an additional very comfortable voting option using a contemporary medium – the Internet.

Polyas in use ...

With Polyas you are able to decrease your costs for elections without giving up the necessary security. Polyas enables a much faster and shorter election process – without the usual large amount of paperwork. Polyas allows anonymous voting in a transparent election process with all rules of election laws being abided to.

During the realisation of elections in your association or society we are on your side as an unbiased service provider. We guarantee maximum standards of quality and security during the entire preparation and realisation of your election.

With Polyas, which has been on the market since 1996, you have an efficient, modern and secure voting system at your command. With Polyas your association or your society, is also stepping onto new, more comfortable pathways for future elections.

Advantage of Polyas at a glance :

Legally binding online elections for organisations, associations and societies
Online elections can be used alternatively or alongside traditional voting systems
An increase in voting participation
A decrease in costs for elections
Maximum standards of quality and security
Polyas offers experience – it has been on the market since 1996 and by now
286 000 votes have been cast via Polyas

Convince Yourself of Polyas's user frinedliness.

Participate in our POLYAS testelection.

History

Since 1997 Micromata has field-tested software for online elections. Already back then, this software managed 70 000 votes. Thanks to the success of this pilot project in Finland, Kumulus, registered association, repeated the use of Polyas in 1999 as well as in 2002 during the junior elections. The number of voting participants was the same. By now, Polyas can note down 250 000 votes internationally.

	2003: Elections to the Board at the entrepreneurial Initiative D21
	In 2003 Polyas was expanded by a module that offered support with digital signatures (software certificates or signature scanner). This technology is implemented during the elections to the board at the entrepreneurial Initiative D21. Eligible voters are all boards of leading companies in Germany.

	2004: Elections for the GI Steering Committee
	Up until now this was the biggest legally binding online election: In autumn 2004 approximately 20 000 eligible voting members of the IT Society were able to vote for their Steering Committee via the Internet.

Legal principles

The introduction of the signature law led to the equal footing of an electronic signature with a hand-written signature. Hence, through the adaptation of all relevant laws it became possible to make many processes that originally were in need for a personal signature legally effective simply with an electronic signature. This also applies to situations were up to now presence was required in order to vote, for instance, during stockholder meetings or board decisions.

Theory and Mathematics

In the Internet numerous assignments can be found discussing various aspects of on-line elections. Almost all voting systems apply fundamentals of the encryption theory such as Public/Private Key Systems, blind signatures, and are based on the decomposition of large prime numbers, which cannot be realised in practice. A very good introduction into this method as well as a few simple protocols for an anonymous election is the book “Applied Cryptography”, second edition, by Bruce Schneier. This book presents a rather euphoric view on the possibilities of cryptology, which is put into perspective in a later publication called “Secret and Lies”. Other interesting approaches to the realisation of elections are found in papers written by Martin Hirt and Kazue Sako, Wen-Sheng Juan and Chin-LaungLei as well as Tatsuaki Okamoto.

A totally different approach is undertaken with the project VoteHere using homomorphic ElGamal encryption. A short introduction to this method can be found in Berry Schoenmakers’ work on the underlying protocol.