Introducing SOVEREIGN: End-to-End Verifiable Elections on a Distributed Platform
We are publishing our research on SOVEREIGN, a cryptographic voting system built on System9 that enables end-to-end verifiable elections across distributed, disconnected infrastructure.
Why We Built SOVEREIGN
Existing electronic voting systems assume a single trusted authority operating centralized infrastructure with reliable connectivity. These assumptions break in exactly the environments where secure, verifiable elections matter most: distributed organizations, disconnected field operations, and multi-jurisdictional governance.
SOVEREIGN is our answer. It is a cryptographic voting system built directly into the System9 platform, designed from the start for distributed trust across independent cells and nodes.
What Makes SOVEREIGN Different
Ballots are never decrypted individually. Votes are encrypted with Paillier homomorphic encryption, which allows the tally to be computed directly on ciphertexts. The sum of encrypted votes produces an encrypted sum, which is then decrypted once by a threshold ceremony.
The private key is never reassembled. Using Shamir's Secret Sharing with Damgard-Jurik partial decryption, each election official computes their piece locally. The full key exists on no single machine, at any point in the process.
Coercion resistance is built in. Based on the Juels-Catalano-Jakobsson (JCJ) protocol, voters can generate fake credentials that are structurally identical to real ones. A coerced voter complies with the fake credential while their real vote counts. Fake ballots are silently filtered during tally with no per-credential disclosure.
Seven election types use the same cryptographic framework: simple majority, super majority, ranked choice, approval, weighted, consensus, and referendum.
Read the Papers
We are publishing five papers covering different aspects of SOVEREIGN:
- SOVEREIGN: Full Paper - Complete protocol description
- Security Specification - Formal security proofs and threat models
- E-Vote-ID Submission - Conference submission for E-Vote-ID 2026
- USENIX Security Submission - Submission to USENIX Security
- Workshop Paper - WPES/VOTE workshop submission
What Comes Next
SOVEREIGN is production-ready in System9 today. We are targeting submission to E-Vote-ID 2026, USENIX Security '27, Financial Cryptography '27, and WPES '26.