Secure and Observable Auditing of Electronic Voting Systems using Stock Indices

In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase in the interest and discussion around the use of electronic voting in our society. Verifiable electronic voting systems rely on the ability to conduct random ballot audits to establish election integrity. However in order for the election results to be legitimate, not only must these audits be conducted in an unbiased manner, but the participants in the election (candidates and voters alike) need to be reasonably convinced thereof. In this paper we propose a procedure for fairly and transparently selecting ballots during an election audit using stock indices.