Parliament House Approach

Workshop on Auditing and Verification for Election Security (WAVES)

A workshop of ASIACRYPT ’25

This is a practically-focused workshop aiming to improve the situation for election verification and public trust in Australia and internationally.

WAVES will include a mix of keynotes, problem presentations, and problem solving sessions.

WAVES will take place on Monday December 8, 2025 at Monash College, 750 Collins St, Docklands VIC 3008. Map

Call for Problems

We are looking for problem presentation proposals. The problem should be relevant to auditing and verification of elections. Problem presentations will be followed by working sessions that may focus on developing:

  • technical solutions which could be of a cryptographic or statistical nature,
  • code – a prototype implementation of a software solution,
  • written solutions – a position paper, technical report, or other explanation intended to explain or communicate in order to solve the problem,
  • planning – for problems that cannot be solved within the workshop, a written sequence of concrete steps that could be taken to address the problem.

To contribute a presentation, please email to waves [at] democracydevelopers.org.au by 11:59pm on October 10th (anywhere on Earth) a session proposal including all of the following.

  1. A session title.
  2. A problem statement, briefly describing the problem to be addressed (typically 2-3 paragraphs, at most one page).
  3. At least one presentation speaker, who will be present at the workshop to introduce the problem and background.
  4. The preferred session format, e.g., hackathon, open discussion, small group breakout discussions followed by reports to the group, or anything else you prefer.
  5. At least one session facilitator, who will be present at the workshop to run the session after the speaker. Speakers and session facilitators may be the same people.

Proposals will be selected based on the clarity of the problem statement, the importance of its motivation, and the estimated likelihood of making good progress on the problem during the session.

Notifications will be sent by October 17.

Program

Will be available soon…

Organisers

Josh Benaloh (Microsoft Research)

Olivier Pereira (UCLouvain)

Vanessa Teague (Democracy Developers Ltd)

Registration

Registration is now open! You can register for the Asiacrypt main conference, the workshop only, or both. Rates for workshop-only attendees are significantly less than conference rates.

The early bird rate is valid from now until 31 October.

Visas

If you need an invitation letter for your visa application, go to the ASIACRYPT visa page.   We recommend completing registration before you submit the visa application.

Accommodation

We have also secured a limited number of discounted rooms in the conference hotel – Pullman Melbourne on the Park. Please use the ASIACRYPT accommodation page to book. The discount rate starts from A$255 per room per night, including tax. It is at least 30% – 40% cheaper than booking elsewhere, including the hotel official website. We highly recommend participants to book it early (better to book it no later than October) as the number of discounted rooms will be running out soon. The booking does not require any pre-payment and allows free cancellation up to 14 days prior to arrival. So even if you have not obtained your necessary approval or documents for travel, you can also book it in advance in order to secure the discount rate.