A review of E-voting: the past, present and future

Abstract

International audienceElectronic voting systems are those which depend on some electronic technology for their correct functionality. Many of them depend on such technology for the communication of election data. Depending on one or more communication channels in order to run elections poses many technical challenges with respect to verifiability, dependability, security, anonymity and trust. Changing the way in which people vote has many social and political implications. The role of election administrators and (independent) observers is fundamentally different when complex communications technology is involved in the process. Electronic voting has been deployed in many different types of election throughout the world for several decades. Despite lack of agreement on whether this has been a ‘success', there has been-in the last few years-enormous investment in remote electronic voting (primarily as a means of exploiting the internet as the underlying communication technology). This paper reviews the past, present and future of on-line voting. It reports on the role of technology transfer, from research to practice, and the range of divergent views concerning the adoption of on-line voting for critical election

E-voting eventually? Online voting in (local) elections

“…While such risks are everpresent, and have resulted in considerable caution, they have not prevented many countries successfully implementing online voting at various levels of government. E-voting was first introduced in local elections in Estonia (which has a population of approximately 1.3 million) in 2005, and repeated in subsequent local elections in 2009 and 2013, and also used in parliamentary elections (2007,2011,2015) and in the Estonian European Parliament election (2009,2014) (Alvarez, Hall and Trechsel, 2009;Björklund, 2016;Gibson et al, 2016). There have been various other initiatives in Europe, such as in Switzerland, where e-voting was introduced in the early 2000s to allow expatriate voters to participate in elections (Mendez and Serdült, 2014).…”

“…5 Several technical challenges are associated with e-voting, as indeed with postal voting. These include verifiability, dependability, security, anonymity and trust (Gibson et al, 2016). However, as with postal voting and other methods in the past, technology and testing has enabled these challenges to be minimised.…”

MCDM approach for weighted ranking of candidates in e-voting

“…E-voting is one of the main components of e-democracy. Currently, the study of the role of e-voting in the countries, which has adopted the formation of e-democracy as a priority, is deemed as an integral part of explorations in the field of e-democracy (Musial-Karg, 2014;Gibson et al, 2016). The dynamic development of ICT and the enhancement of social media tools have resulted in significant changes in the functioning of modern countries and societies.…”

A scheme of analysis for eVoting as a technological innovation system

“…Technology is evolving at a very fast pace, yet most EMBs in Africa are not using it fully (Ahmada, Abdullahb, & Arshadc, ; Gibson et al, ). However, some EMBs (Brazil, India, and Estonia) are acknowledging trends within their environments by embracing technology in all the electoral processes under their control to enhance the credibility of elections (Achieng & Ruhode, , p. 2; Unt et al, ).…”

“…However, some EMBs (Brazil, India, and Estonia) are acknowledging trends within their environments by embracing technology in all the electoral processes under their control to enhance the credibility of elections (Achieng & Ruhode, , p. 2; Unt et al, ). As current environments generally have high usage of technological products such as mobile phones, banking, and the Internet, EMBs are encouraged to be proactive in technology implementation to counter some of the challenges (frauds, spoilt papers, and credibility) in manual voting systems (Aljarrah, Elrehail, & Aababneh, ; Gibson et al, ) and low voter turnout (Crothers, ). Confirming that elections are free and fair has been a goal of independent election observers for many years.…”