Patent ID: 7597258

Claim:
An election system comprising at least a member services computer system and an election services computer system, the member services computer system being configured to: store, for the members associated with an election, member-identifying information for each member and a unique first member code for each member in a group authorized to vote in an election, the first member code being related to a unique second member code, the first and second member codes not including member-identifying information; communicate to the election services computer system the first member code for each member in the group; receive from the election services computer system a communication indicating that a member has voted, and not receive information related to how the member voted, whereby the content of the vote of a member cannot be associated with the identification of the member using information contained in the member services computer system; the election services computer system being configured to: receive the first member code; store the first member code; authenticate each voting member accessing the elections services computer system by receiving the second member code from each voting member, and relating the received second member code to the stored first member code; receive a vote from each authenticated voting member; store the vote received from each authenticated voter; and not receive or store, at any time during the election, member-identifying information in association with the first member code or in association with each member vote, whereby the content of the vote of a member cannot be associated with the identification of the member that voted using information that the election services computer system is configured to store.