Bachelor Thesis: Liquid Democracy

In 2012 I wrote my Bachelor Thesis on this topic. The source code is published on github as open source. Further, a paper was published in 2013 IEEE 10th International Converence on e-Business Engeneering (CEBE): 10.1109/ICEBE.2013.74

Abstract: Liquid Democracy is a method of decision-making which allows participants to delegate their voting power to others. Liquid Democracy includes discussions, finding election issues and holding elections. Proxy Voting is the voting part of Liquid Democracy. This work focuses on software for Proxy Voting as an electronic voting system. Voters can either vote directly on a topic or delegate their voting power to another voter called proxy. In this thesis requirements regarding functionality and security for such a software are discussed. Further a model that meets these requirements using XML Signatures and asymmetric XML Encryption is provided. Compared to existing models anonymity, verifiability and integrity are significantly improved. A basic concept is the separation of the system into multiple servers. As a proof of concept, the system has been implemented using Java web services technology. Further, the risks of this model against possible attacks have been analyzed.

Download Bachelor Thesis: liquid-democracy.pdf (920 KiB)