Associating Voting Sessions With Tabulation Machines in Electronic Voting

A computing apparatus comprising:

• one or more computer readable storage media;
• a processing system operatively coupled with the one or more computer readable storage media;
• and
• program instructions for supporting electronic voting stored on the one or more computer readable storage media that, when executed by the processing system, direct the processing system to at least:
• obtain session information in an encrypted state for conducting a voting session;
• decrypt the session information using a decryption key for a voting resource;
• present a ballot provided in the session information in a user interface and receive votes cast in association with the ballot through the user interface;
• encrypt the votes with an encryption key associated with a tabulation resource associated with the voting session and provided in the session information;
• and
• send the votes in an encrypted state to one or more datastores identified in the session information and accessed by the tabulation resource when tabulating the votes.

A method for operating an electronic voting service comprising:

• pairing voting machines with tabulation machines and associating each machine pair resulting from the pairing with a ballot;
• receiving requests for session information from the voting machines;
• for each request received from a voting machine:
• populate the session information with at least the ballot associated with the machine pair, one or more datastores associated with the ballot, and an encryption key associated with the tabulation machine in the machine pair;
• encrypt the session information using an encryption key associated with the voting machine in the machine pair;
• and
• send the session information in an encrypted state to the voting machine.