Sensus Software

If you are an American or Canadian citizen you may download Sensus and install it on a UNIX system for testing purposes. The Sensus software includes C and Perl code.

Download RSAREF

If you don't already have the RSAREF library on your system, you will need to download it. You may obtain instructions for downloading RSAREF from ftp://ftp.rsa.com/rsaref/README.

Download Sensus

Download the gziped Sensus tar file SENSUS.tar.gz (March 4, 1996 version).
Type: gunzip SENSUS.tar.gz to uncompress the tar file.
Type: tar xf SENSUS.tar to unpack the tar file into a SENSUS directory.

Installing Sensus

Extract RSAREF in a temp directory.
Copy the contents of the RSA "source" directory into the SENSUS/rsaref directory.
In the main SENSUS directory run make to generate librsaref.a, libsensus.a, pollster, registrar, tallier, and validator.

Installing the Pollster Module

Edit the first line of SENSUS/pollster/webget to include the correct path for Perl on your system.

Installing the Administrative Modules

You need not install the administrative modules unless you plan to conduct your own Sensus poll. These modules must be installed on systems that have an HTTP server that supports CGI scripts.

Edit the Perl scripts in SENSUS/perl_source to include the correct path for Perl on your system.
Because these scripts must run as setuid, we include C wrappers that allow this without causing security holes. Compile register.c, tally,c, and validate.c and chmod u+s the executables.

Setting up files for an election

Create a CGI directory for your election with sub-directories for the registrar, tallier, and validator. Alternatively you may create each of these directories on a separate machine.
Copy the executables from the SENSUS/perl_source directory, register, validate, and tally into the corresponding CGI directories (and if necessary rename them according to your system's CGI conventions).
Copy register.pl, validate.pl, and tally.pl from the SENSUS/perl_source directory into the corresponding CGI directories.
Copy the executables from the SENSUS/register, SENSUS/validator, and SENSUS/tallier directories to the corresponding CGI directories. (Note, if you would rather keep these executables somewhere else, you may modify the perl scripts accordingly.)
Place an empty "registeredVoterFile" in the registrar CGI directory
Place an "eligableVoterFile" in the registrar CGI directory This file should have the following format:
```
(Voter: VOTERID Token: TOKEN)
(Voter: VOTERID Token: TOKEN)
     . . .
```
where VOTERID and TOKEN are integers.
- To start with, just include two voterids and tokens which you can use to generate keys for the validator and tallier.
- Run sensus and select register to vote.
- When prompted, enter the validator voterid and token, the URL for the registrar (the URL of your registrar CGI directory followed by the name of the registrar wrapper executable), and a file name for storing the validator's keys.
- Select register to vote again.
- When prompted, enter the tallier voterid and token, the URL for the registrar, and a file name for storing the tallier's keys.
- Now remove the eligableVoterFile and replace it with the one you are really going to use for your election.
Place an empty "receiptListFile" in the tallier CGI directory.
Create a ballot. The validator address should be the URL of your validator CGI directory followed by the name of the validate wrapper executable. The tallier address should be the URL of your tallier CGI directory followed by the name of the tally wrapper executable. The validator and tallier keys should be in the files you specified above in your .sensus directory.
Place the validator's key pair in the validator CGI directory with the name "keyFile."
Place the tallier's key pair in the tallier CGI directory with the name "keyFile."
Place the validator's public key in the tallier CGI directory with the name "validatorKey."
When registering voters, have voters contact the registrar at the registrar CGI directory URL followed by the name of the register wrapper executable.
After the registration period is over, move the registeredVoterFile into the validator CGI directory or, if registration is ongoing, create a symbolic link in the validator CGI directory to the registeredVoterFile in the registrar CGI directory.
The results of the election will end up in the "receiptListFile", you may use the SENSUS/perl_source/get_results.pl script to parse and count the results.