Election Verification is a two-step process performed by an election manager to confirm that every ballot cast is authentic, unaltered, and accurately included in the results. Certification is Skypunch Technology’s formal recognition that this verification was successfully completed at a specific point in time.
It is important to distinguish between ballot verification and election verification. Ballot verification allows an individual voter to confirm that their specific ballot was recorded and remains unaltered. Election verification, described below, is performed by the election manager and confirms the integrity of the entire election before results are certified.
How Skypunch Proves Election Integrity
Verification is possible because every ballot is stored in a cryptographically protected digital ledger designed specifically to detect tampering. This architecture ensures that any attempt to alter stored data would be immediately detectable. When data, like a ballot, is committed to this ledger, it is hash-chained using a cryptographic hash function to all previously committed data. The ledger also periodically generates what are called hash digests which are saved to a tamperproof data storage repository. Each hash digest may be thought of as a fingerprint of the entire ledger at a specific point in time. If one single piece of data in the ledger were to be modified, it would result in the hash digest having a very different value.
The Two-Step Verification Process
Step One—Ledger Verification
When an election manager initiates verification, (typically at the conclusion of voting though there is no harm in doing it during voting), that manager visits the Verify election results page of their account and steps through steps one and two. In performing step one, there are two digest hashes that come into use.
- One is the hash digest that is one day older than the oldest ballot for an election. We call this the input digest and by virtue of it being one day older than the oldest ballot in an election, we are certain that all ballots for an election are included in the verification.
- The other is generated by the verification process at the moment of running verification. If the recalculated value derived from the input digest matches the current ledger value, the system confirms that no tampering has occurred between the time the input digest was generated and the moment verification runs.
Step Two—Ballot Comparison
While the ledger is the definitive system of record, reporting and tabulation are powered by a separate high-performance database. Verification therefore requires confirming that every ballot recorded in the ledger is identically represented in the reporting system. Step two, which can take a little while to complete depending on the number of ballots to examine, does this.
Certification Mark
An election is officially verified by the election manager and certified by Skypunch Technology at the moment verification completes successfully. Once verified, the Skypunch Technology certification mark, including certification date, will appear on the results page. A sample might look like:
(Certification explained.)
Certification Date
All verification activity is timestamped. It is also possible to perform the verification process at any point during an election. When successfully performed midway through an election, it would trigger the certification mark and date to appear on the results page. Voting could continue with ballots being cast after the date of certification. Any voting activity occurring after the certification timestamp is not included in that certification cycle. An election manager would need to again perform verification after the conclusion of all voting in order to generate a refreshed certification date that includes all voting activity. An election manager may repeatedly perform the verification with verification history viewable in a client’s account. In short, certification reflects the integrity of the election up to the precise moment verification was performed.
Summary
Verification and certification are not procedural formalities — they form an integrated, end-to-end integrity model that is uniquely implemented within the Skypunch voting system, enabling elections to move from trust-based processes to provable outcomes.
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