Is Internet Voting Coming Soon?
In some parts of Europe Electronic voting using the Internet is already possible, and more governments are interested in making it more available. Until now only small countries, and some areas of bigger ones, have conducted real Internet voting elections.
Some cities used Electronic voting, including cell phones, to conduct polls for controversial projects, and the experiences and turnout have been excellent. According with Scytl (www.scytl.com), a leader in Electronic Voting from Barcelona “Internet voting is … the next natural step in the evolution of electoral processes because of its potential to increase voter turnout rates, facilitate the voting process to citizens and enfranchise voters such as overseas voters, military voters and voters with disabilities”. Scytl is currently handling votes for the State of Florida and the Department of Defense for deployed military personal.
Most of the current electronic voting in the US is handled by terminals in the electoral places using Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems (DRE), and the voters need to be present at the polling station to cast their votes.
Previous issues with Electronic Voting:
• No Parallel Recounting: Since the audit code being executed in the voting terminals is protected and a trade secret, to avoid the possibility to tamper with it, it was not possible to conduct an independent recount of votes of the results of the terminals.
• Complexity of Certification: The electronic voting terminals were complex machines and handled all the voting process functions, thus making difficult to detect hidden irregularities in the system. Last minute changes made the certification process more difficult since must be tested and certified quickly to start the voting process.
• Lack of Transparency for Voters: People used to paper ballots argued that they knew their votes were cast because they introduced them in the ballot box themselves. On an Electronic Voting system they didn’t have the visual assurance that their votes were correctly recorded since everything is electronic. A system that enables them to verify their votes are correctly stored was necessary.
Continued on the next page
Follow Technorati