Evaluating Procedural Alternatives in an e-Voting Domain: Lesson Learned

The ProVotE project aims at actuating art. 84 of law 2 - 5/3/2003, which promotes the introduction of e-voting in Trentino for the next provincial elections (2008). To provide a smooth transition to the new way of voting ProVotE takes a multi-disciplinary approach that develops along di®erent lines, among which, sociological, normative, organizational, and technological. Carrying out an election is a critical activity that involves several people of di®erent organizations over a period of time that spans months. This paper describes part of the work carried out within the organizational/logistical line of the ProVotE project and describes the approach we are taking in order to provide precise models of the electoral processes of an electronic voting, while, at the same time, providing mechanisms for documenting, reasoning on the possible alternative implementations of the procedures to support the elections of 2008. In particular, the approach is based on defining an alternating sequence of models, written using UML and Tropos, that allow to document the existing electoral processes and, at the same time, that are used to reason, evaluate, and choose possible alternative implementations of the electronic voting processes.