Northern Virginia Community College Intro to Database Discussion Query

Description

Consider the attached hypothetical ballot and write down its clear form representation. Use placeholders as explained in slide 10 of the Week 12 presentation. Explain your reasoning, and in particular how you set the placeholder values. Submit your answer as a Word or PDF document.
[Transcript of the slide] An encrypted ballot consists of encryptions of zeros and ones representing whether the voter has selected any one of the candidates on the ballot. A simple clear form ballot with a single contest and 4 candidates might look like the one shown here. This ballot indicates that the voter has selected the 2nd candidate. The encrypted version of this ballot consists of four encrypted values. To prove that an encrypted ballot represents a valid vote, we need to prove that the voter only expressed one preference. To address this, we use the homomorphic property of the encryption which allows us to combine encrypted values to produce an encryption of the sum and we then prove that this encryption is an encryption of 1. However, a voter may decide not to vote in a contest. By homomorphically combining values in the encrypted form of this ballot, we would get an encryption of zero, revealing the fact that the voter decided not to vote in this contest. The confidentiality of this choice should also be protected.
To address this, we add a placeholder option to each contest. This option can be thought of as a “none of the above” vote. So, a contest with four options would be typically represented by a ballot with five values ®bsp;with the 5th value set to one if the voter doesn’t select any of the four options offered.
An encrypted ballot can now be shown to be legitimate by proving that each value is an encryption of either zero or one and that the homomorphic combination of all the encryptions in each contest is an encryption of one.
There is one further generalization that must be considered. In some elections, there are contests where a voter is allowed to select more than one option. For example, there might be five options of which a voter is allowed to select up to three. To accommodate this possibility, we can specify a selection limit for each contest and generalize the use of placeholders. If the selection limit for a contest is higher than 1, additional placeholder values are added ®bsp;with the total number of placeholders matching the selection limit.  For example, a contest in which the voter can choose up to three out of five candidates will be represented with eight encrypted values, the first 5 of which match the selections that can be made by a voter, and the last 3 of which are placeholder values that can be set if a voter does not make the maximum number of selections. In the example on this slide, the 1st instance represents a ballot in which all three allowed votes have been used; the next instance shows a ballot in which only two options were selected; the following ballot instance contains one selection (and 2 placeholders set); and the final instance shows a case where a voter has made no selections and all three placeholders are used. Most elections consist of more than a single contest, and a single ballot can include multiple contests. An encrypted ballot still consists of encryptions of zeros and ones, but the interpretation of these encryptions depends upon details provided in the ballot manifest.
The example at the bottom of this slide shows the clear form of a ballot with four contests: (1) in the first contest, the second of three options is selected (with the fourth position as an unused placeholder); (2) in the second contest, the first of two options is chosen (with the third position as an unused placeholder); (3) in the third contest, which is a “three out of five®bsp;contest, the first and third option selected, with one of three placeholders set to one; and (4) in the 4th contest, neither of two options is selected (with the placeholder set to one).

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November 2022 Elections Ballot
? Fill bubbles with blank ink to express a preference
School Board
County
School Board President
Vote for 1
? John Doe
County Executive
Vote for 1
? John Elrich
? Jill Doe
? Jack Doe
? Jake Elrich
? Jill Elrich
Member at Large
Vote for up 2
? John Simpson
? Jerry Elrich
? Josh Elrich
Council Member
Vote for up to 4
? Jackie Smith
? John Smith
? Jake Simpson
? Jill Simpson
? Jerry Simpson
City
Mayor
Vote for 1
? John Grant
? Jake Grant
? Jill Grant
? Jerry Grant
? Josh Grant
Council Member
Vote for up to 3
? John Smith
? Jake Smith
? Jill Smith
? Jerry Smith
? Josh Smith
? Jerry Smith
? Jake Smith
? Jill Smith
? Jerry Smith
? Josh Smith
? Jerry Smith
? Jody Smith
Federal
U.S. President
Vote for 1
? John Biden
? Homer Trump
? Jake Bloomberg

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