Patent ID: 7099471

Claim:
A method in a data processing system for discerning corruption of an electronic ballot, comprising: in a voter computer system: receiving a ballot choice selected by a voter from among a set of valid ballot choices; encoding the received ballot choice in a ballot; encrypting the ballot; constructing a validity proof proving that the encrypted ballot corresponds to a valid ballot choice; sending the encrypted ballot and the validity proof to a vote collection center computer system; in the vote collection center computer system: receiving the encrypted ballot and validity proof; verifying the validity proof; only if the validity proof is successfully verified: without decrypting the encrypted ballot, generating an encrypted vote confirmation of the encrypted ballot; sending the encrypted vote confirmation to the voter computer system; in the voter computer system: receiving the encrypted vote confirmation; decrypting the encrypted vote confirmation to obtain a vote confirmation; displaying the obtained vote confirmation; and if a confirmation dictionary in the user's possession does not translate the displayed vote confirmation to the ballot choice selected by the voter, determining that the ballot has been corrupted.