Two teams test quantum voting protocol with entangled photons
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- Researchers have tested a quantum voting protocol that combines mathematical techniques with quantum physics to guarantee that every vote is counted and remains anonymous.
- The theory was originally developed by researchers in France a few years ago, and has now been validated experimentally by both the original team and an independent second team.
- The protocol replaces traditional voting bits with entangled photons produced by shooting lasers at a special crystal, allowing votes to be cast and tallied while any tampering with one photon can be detected via the other three.
- The teams ran tests with both 2 choices and 4 voters, and with 16 choices and 8 voters, publishing their results in Physical Review Letters.
- Mark Hillery of Hunter College called the experiments "nice proof-of-principle" tests but cautioned that the entangled states are fragile and have not been transmitted across large distances without losing their quantum properties.
- Nicolas Laurent-Puig of Sorbonne University, part of the original team, said the most likely near-term application is in smaller elections such as those among small councils.
- Joey Marcellino of the University of Geneva, part of the second team, suggested the protocol could also secure anonymous message boards or distribute secret computations across several untrusted quantum computers.
Why it matters: For small governing bodies like local councils, this protocol offers a theoretical guarantee of vote integrity and anonymity that current electronic systems cannot match — but the fragility of entangled states over distance, as flagged by Hillery, confines real-world use to small, localized elections until the transmission problem is solved.
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