Summary

We note that these requirements are not from the point of view of individual voters, who might prefer to be able to prove how they voted. They are, rather, from the point of view of the people as a whole. These are the requirements which must be met in order to ensure that the representatives elected are the representatives chosen by the people.

To summarise (and please note that order does not indicate priority):

1. the system must allow only eligible voters to vote, and they must be allowed to vote only once,
2. the voter's identity and their vote must be kept separate,
3. the voter's intent must be recorded correctly,
4. the vote cannot be altered or removed once it has been recorded,
5. tabulation must be accurate and independently reproducible, and
6. the public must be confident that all the above requirements are met.

No voting system can perfectly meet all the above requirements, but they must be met at least enough to ensure that fraud is not occurring on a wide enough scale to alter the result of an election.