Toward protocols for quantum-ensured privacy and secure voting

We present a number of schemes that use quantum mechanics to preserve privacy, in particular, we show that entangled quantum states can be useful in maintaining privacy. We further develop our original proposal [see Phys. Lett. A 349, 75 (2006)] for protecting privacy in voting, and examine its security under certain types of attacks, in particular dishonest voters and external eavesdroppers. A variation of these quantum-based schemes can be used for multi-party function evaluation. We consider functions corresponding to group multiplication of $N$ group elements, with each element chosen by a different party. We show how quantum mechanics can be useful in maintaining the privacy of the choices group elements.