Elections in most major democracies use paper ballots,
which require an army of people to count the votes. This laborious and time-consuming process
often results in a delay in declaring a winner. If we can use the internet for
important services such as healthcare and banking, why don’t we vote online?
The concept of internet voting first gained traction during the 2000 U.S.
presidential election when crucial election results in Florida were disputed,
leading to a recount and delay in declaring the outcome of the contest.
"Just the most bizarre thing I've ever heard.
How it could be given to one, taken back and now, 'oh we're not sure again'."
Problems included voters’ confusion at the design of the ballot paper,
as well as faulty punch card voting machines. At the time,
internet adoption was rapidly gaining pace and there were growing calls
for it to replace America’s aging election infrastructure.
While 32 states in the U.S. have experimented with some form of internet voting, this has
been mostly limited to a small sub-set of voters such as military personnel and overseas citizens.
However, one country has embraced the use of technology in its elections. In 2005,
Estonia became the first country in the world to hold nation-wide elections using internet voting.
Its system, known as i-voting, allows voters to cast their ballot from anywhere
in the world with an internet connection. During a designated early voting period,
the voter logs onto the system using an Identification-card or Mobile-ID to cast a ballot.
To maintain secrecy, the voter’s identity is removed from the
ballot before it reaches the National Electoral Commission for counting,
and voters change their vote as many times as they want before the advanced polling
deadline, with each updated ballot automatically canceling the last.
On election day, voters may choose to override their online vote by
casting a paper ballot at a polling station.
According to the United Nations and the European Convention on Human Rights,
voter secrecy is one of the many essential elements of a democracy.
Votes also need to be accurate and verifiable to ensure that the system can be trusted.
Voting in many early modern democracies took place openly,
permitting swift counting and public verification,
but also allowing electors to be bribed or bullied into favoring a certain candidate.
Reformers across the globe lobbied for the adoption of secret ballots
through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
in order to ensure that voters could make their choice free from the fear of reprisals.
Although technological innovations have led some of the world’s
most populous democracies, including India, Brazil and the U.S.,
to use computerized vote-counting or vote-casting machines,
these have generally been kept offline and haven’t always delivered instantaneous results.
Critics of online voting believe that cybersecurity remains a major concern
and that current technologies are unable to ensure the integrity of elections.
Malicious actors may be able to attack and
undermine an election conducted online to their advantage, often undetected.
An independent report on Estonia’s i-Voting system by cybersecurity experts in 2014
found ‘staggering gaps’ in the system’s architecture
at the time, which left it open to cyberattacks from foreign powers.
Besides being vulnerable to hacking, online elections can’t be audited effectively,
unlike physical ballots, which leave a literal paper trail. While
cyber attackers could potentially delete millions of ballots from their bedroom,
stealing the same number of paper ballots would be much more difficult without someone noticing.
The geographical distribution of polling stations and constituencies also distributes the risk,
while securely printed and marked paper is hard to duplicate or
alter. Votes can be checked and recounted by multiple people,
and the counting process itself can be watched by many pairs of eyes.
This is why several groups of computer scientists
have argued against internet voting,
or said it should only be used in parallel with a paper system for verification.
In 2015, online voting in the Australian state of New South Wales was paused
following concerns there was a ‘major vulnerability’ in an internet voting system
used for an election that could have compromised 66,000 electronic votes.
Although France adopted internet voting for certain
expatriates in 2012, the scheme was halted
five years later due to cybersecurity concerns. Blockchain technology has been touted as
a potential solution to these fears, but cybersecurity experts remain unconvinced.
Start-up company, Voatz, has trialed its blockchain technology in a few elections,
including the 2018 general election in West Virginia, with mixed results.
But this hasn’t dampened interest in the feasibility of online elections in the U.S.,
especially during a pandemic.
In February 2020, a district election in the Seattle area became the first to allow
each of its 1.2 million eligible voters￼ to cast a ballot through their smartphones.
More than 94% of the ballots returned were completed electronically and voter turnout
almost doubled from the previous election. Since 2007, Estonia’s I-voting system has
seen a steady increase in the ballots cast over the internet for parliamentary elections.
In 2019 there was a 40% increase in online votes from the previous poll.
However, this hasn’t led to an increase in voter turnout.
44% of Estonians now use i-voting, and according to the government,
i-voting saves over 11,000 working days per election.
A study also found that i-voting is 50% cheaper than traditional paper voting.
But it’s important to remember that there are still more than three and a half billion people,
nearly half of the global population, who are not yet connected to the internet,
so online voting may not be possible in many countries for some time.
An election is a uniquely difficult process to deliver
under the pressure of high expectations, limited budgets and a hard deadline.
According to some, there is no technology yet available
that can meet the challenges of delivering elections safely via the internet.
Although many aspects of our lives have shifted online,
it may be a while before we can vote there too.
Hi guys, thanks for watching our video.
Before you go we'd love for you to subscribe to the channel
and comment below the video to let us know whether you think
internet voting is a good idea. We'll see you next time.