Establish certifiable Voting provider boundary

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# Native certifiable Voting program
## Objective and non-claim
GovOPlaN may develop a native end-to-end verifiable Voting provider, but the
current platform and bundled `local_confidential` provider are not certified
voting products. Certification cannot be obtained by adding a label, tests, or
general platform security controls. It applies to a precisely bounded Target
of Evaluation (TOE), version, evaluated configuration, lifecycle, and evidence
set assessed by an independent laboratory and certification authority.
The native provider must therefore be an isolated assurance component behind
`voting.provider.<id>`, not an implicit claim over all of GovOPlaN. Voting owns
the governed ballot lifecycle and evidence projection; the TOE owns ballot
secrecy, cryptographic casting, verification, tallying, and the evaluated
ceremony. Policy, Access, Identity Trust, Encryption, Forms Runtime, Workflow
Engine, Committee, Decisions, Audit, Records, and Reporting may support the
journey without being silently pulled into the TOE.
## Program stages
### 1. Protection profile and legal target
- identify election classes, jurisdictions, attack potential, voting
principles, accessibility duties, and retention obligations;
- select the applicable BSI Protection Profile/TR and Common Criteria target;
- engage a recognized evaluation facility before fixing the architecture;
- write the Security Target, assumptions, threats, organizational policies,
security objectives, and evaluated configuration.
### 2. TOE and trust boundaries
- specify client, election server, bulletin board, verifier, tally component,
key ceremony, build/release chain, time source, and operator boundaries;
- define electorate preparation and archival as explicit supporting processes
when they are outside the TOE;
- prohibit node-local authoritative state and undeclared side channels;
- define compromise, suspension, challenge, annulment, recovery, and evidence
export before implementation.
### 3. Protocol and independent review
- select a published, independently reviewed end-to-end verifiable protocol;
- use reviewed cryptographic libraries and parameter suites rather than
designing new cryptography;
- provide individual and universal verification without exposing vote choice;
- define coercion-resistance claims truthfully, including what is not solved;
- commission independent cryptographic and privacy review before production.
### 4. Conformance implementation
- implement canonical ballot/electorate/result/evidence encodings;
- bind every cast and tally artifact to the frozen definition and electorate;
- provide deterministic conformance fixtures, malformed-input suites,
property tests, fault injection, and cross-implementation verification;
- preserve receipt privacy and prevent credentials, raw votes, or private keys
from entering GovOPlaN evidence projections;
- expose certification state through `VotingProviderAssuranceDeclaration`.
### 5. Controlled lifecycle
- reproducible, signed builds and reviewed dependencies;
- role-separated source, release, election, key-custody, and audit authority;
- vulnerability handling, maintenance impact analysis, SBOM, provenance, and
controlled update path for in-progress elections;
- production ceremonies, backup/restore, disaster recovery, secure deletion,
monitoring, incident response, and independently witnessed evidence.
### 6. Evaluation and operation
- laboratory pre-evaluation and gap remediation;
- formal Common Criteria evaluation/certification of an exact TOE version;
- target-specific deployment acceptance against the evaluated configuration;
- certificate and maintenance-report monitoring;
- fail-closed retirement or profile downgrade when validity expires or the
evaluated configuration changes.
## Work-product gates
Native implementation can proceed through fixtures and research profiles, but
the `external_certified` runtime profile remains unavailable until all of these
are independently evidenced:
- approved Security Target and TOE boundary;
- independent protocol/cryptographic review;
- conformance and adverse-condition evidence;
- controlled build and release provenance;
- operational ceremony and recovery evidence;
- valid product/version/configuration-specific certificate.
Research, evaluation, and certified states are separate. A provider in
evaluation may support a bounded test profile, but cannot become certified by
configuration or administrator override.
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# POLYAS provider profile
## Current integration position
POLYAS is the first external provider selected for high-assurance GovOPlaN
Voting. This is an integration decision, not a certification claim. Until a
contracted machine interface, sandbox, exact product/version binding, and
current certificate evidence are available, the integration remains
operator-assisted and must not advertise the `external_certified` assurance
profile.
The public POLYAS material documents the Online Voting Manager, spreadsheet
electoral-roll import, PDF/Excel result export, an election control portal,
verification tools, SecureLink, and an electoral-board interface. It does not
document a stable public API that is sufficient for an unattended GovOPlaN
provider. The initial integration therefore uses the existing external
provider contract as its target and keeps manual handoffs explicit:
1. GovOPlaN freezes the ballot definition and electorate hashes.
2. An authorized election officer creates and seals the corresponding POLYAS
election using a reviewed export.
3. GovOPlaN records the POLYAS project reference, exact product/profile, and
handoff evidence without storing voter credentials.
4. Voters enter the provider through its controlled launch or invitation path.
5. An authorized officer imports signed result and protocol artifacts.
6. GovOPlaN verifies the frozen binding, records aggregate results and evidence,
and retains certification, challenge, and annulment as separate actions.
Operator-assisted imports must be labelled as such. Browser automation or
screen scraping is not an acceptable production API.
## Provider information required
Before implementing unattended preparation, launch, status, or result
acquisition, obtain from POLYAS:
- the contracted API/protocol specification and versioning policy;
- sandbox credentials and representative test-election fixtures;
- supported ballot methods, weighting, voter groups, replacement, quorum, and
threshold semantics;
- idempotency, revision, sealing, cancellation, outcome-unknown, and retry
behavior;
- invitation and voter-authentication boundaries;
- signed result, archive, audit, and verification artifact formats;
- retention, deletion, subprocessor, location, incident, and DPA terms;
- product/version-specific Security Target, certificate, maintenance reports,
validity period, and evaluated configuration;
- recovery and continuity evidence for an election in progress.
Credentials belong in governed credential envelopes. Raw selections, voter
credentials, recovery codes, and private provider keys must never cross the
Voting provider boundary.
## Certification gate
The BSI certificate `BSI-DSZ-CC-0862-V2-2021` for POLYAS CORE 2.5.0, including
maintained versions described by its maintenance reports, was valid through
2026-06-24. As of 2026-08-04, that validity date has passed. A new election must
not be labelled `external_certified` from this historical certificate alone.
The adapter must expose a `VotingProviderAssuranceDeclaration`. The runtime
accepts `external_certified` only when the declaration pins:
- the exact provider and implementation contract;
- supported assurance profile and protocol version;
- certification authority and reference;
- an independently retrievable evidence reference;
- a current validity window.
The declaration is frozen with the ballot and revalidated before cast and
finalization. Expiry, revocation, provider replacement, protocol change, or
certificate substitution fails closed and requires explicit reconciliation.
Authoritative references:
- [BSI certificate record](https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Zertifikate_CC/CC/Sonstiges/0862_0862V2.html)
- [BSI TR-03169](https://www.bsi.bund.de/SharedDocs/Downloads/DE/BSI/Publikationen/TechnischeRichtlinien/TR03169/BSI-TR-03169.pdf)
- [POLYAS security overview](https://support.polyas.com/en/faqs/security/ensure-secure-voting/)
- [POLYAS election control portal](https://support.polyas.com/en/online-voting-manager/features/authentication/election-control-portal/)
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weighted counts, a result hash, and evidence. GovOPlaN does not claim that a
provider or deployment satisfies legal or certification requirements merely
because the adapter contract is implemented.
Each provider declares supported assurance profiles, protocol and
implementation identity, and certification state. Voting pins that declaration
when opening and revalidates it before provider casting and finalization.
`external_certified` requires a current authority, certificate reference,
evidence reference, and validity window; a changed, expired, or revoked claim
fails closed.
Core bounds provider evidence to JSON, 64 items and 64 KiB and rejects fields
that can carry credentials, private key material, plaintext, or raw
selections before Voting or Committee can persist the projection.
@@ -57,6 +63,14 @@ external certification. It therefore cannot be selected for `secret` or
the ballot opens; externally hosted providers may continue to require a
pre-existing reference.
POLYAS is the selected first external provider, initially through an explicit
operator-assisted handoff until a contracted API and sandbox are available.
The historical POLYAS CORE 2.5 Common Criteria certificate expired on
2026-06-24, so its reference alone cannot enable `external_certified`. See
[the POLYAS provider profile](POLYAS_PROVIDER_PROFILE.md). Native certifiable
development is governed by the separate
[certifiable Voting program](CERTIFIABLE_VOTING_PROGRAM.md).
## Lifecycle and concurrency
Ballots move through `draft -> open -> closed -> certified`. A closed or
@@ -109,4 +123,7 @@ node-local filesystem.
- raw selections are never returned by list, detail, result, or history APIs
- provider result keys must exactly match frozen options
- external results require evidence and cannot exceed the frozen electorate
- external providers must match the assurance declaration frozen at opening
- externally certified providers must remain currently certified through
provider casting and finalization
- certification and annulment use separate permissions