Electronic Voting
Pros, Cons and Challenges
Introduction
These thoughts were discussed with a group of people working in Elections Management Bodies in five Arab countries (including me, representing Palestine).
Among Arab countries, UAE and Oman are adopting electronic voting.
We were asked, as a split team, to come out with pros, cons and challenges of electronic voting. In this article I tried to present our findings with few edits to reflect my opinions and convictions.
The scope of this article is limited to voting; specifically, vote casting on electronic voting machine only. I will neither discuss internet voting, nor VVPAT alternatives. But I assume the essence of using such technologies is the same.
Now, I will directly and shortly, jump into the findings:
Pros
Usually the main reason for using any technology is to increase efficiency. Furthermore, using the technology could be combined with other positive side effects (or byproducts):
- Time Considerations: Reduce the time of casting and counting, consequently reading the time needed to announce the results.
- Accuracy: E-voting increases accuracy and (theoretically) eliminates human error.
- Cost Efficiency: Cost efficiency in the long run, since machines can be used for several elections and several years. Furthermore, it reduces the cost of hiring human resources on election day.
- Environment friendly: paperless system.
- Accessibility: Allow People with Disabilities to cast their votes without need for help. The system can be equipped with sound and images, in addition to Braille language beside the buttons.
- Multi-lingual system: Especially in countries with more than one language.
Cons
Surely there will be negative effects (or threats) by using the technology. Here are some of them:
- No materialized evidence of results, especially in case of the need for re-counting. And consequently, the difficulty of providing materialized evidence to courts.
- High initial investment cost; acquiring the technology, devices, software, skilled people and infrastructure is known for its high cost.
- Technology problems; like, electricity cut, communication issues, failure in devices or some machinery, and so on.
- Perception; people’s perception about elections is important in accepting the results. Most people want to see the process and be able to verify it.
Challenges
- Legal framework; it is not easy for most of the countries to get the parlements approval on passing a bill for e-voting; maybe it is worth mentioning that half of countries were back to manual voting (or other forms of electronic voting systems) after approving the electronic one.
E-Voting was declared unconstitutional in by the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany in 2009
- Trust in the system; difficulty of gaining stakeholders trust especially voters and political parties
- Voter education and e-literacy: people are familiar with manual voting, some people are not willing, or not able to change. Some people have a phobia (or complete untrust) of using the technology.
- Cyber-security challenges; as security experts say; there is not a 100% secure system (except for a turned off computer). Building solid infrastructure, secure lines and bug free softwares is a dream for all developers and engineers.
- Vote secrecy; the system must not connect voter’s identity to their votes.
E-Voting was suspended in the Netherlands after suspicions about vote secrecy in 2008
- Transparency; in general, transparency to the public is not a good friend with ICT Security. The implementing EMBs should also think about third party review to the source code.
Finally
Using technology increases efficiency. However, using technology in voting is a challenging and problematic topic. For some people, and legislators, putting a paper in the ballot box and, manually and transparently, counting these papers is the key principle of elections.
Some countries adopt VVPAT voting machines to overcome most of the mentioned challenges, While countries using internet voting have closed secure networks, advanced e-governments, and usually combine the casting process with special equipment for user authentication.
