Online Voting: The Future of Democracy
As Americans enter their eighth month of social distancing, the 2020 Presidential Election has intensified the need for online voting. Many advocates of digital voting argue that online voting would increase voter turnout, which, for the US, has been lower than other developed countries for some time now. Counterarguments cite security concerns for such methods, as well as ethical issues linked to anonymous voting. As more and more countries around the world experiment with e-government platforms, the US election represents a key opportunity to assess the long-term value of online voting.
The advent of capable computers soon raised questions about potential applications of technology to voting models. At the time, the primary use of this technology was for ballot counting. Theoretically, computer-assisted ballot-counting provides better and more efficient analyses of voting data, resulting in faster, more accurate vote counts. Such methods have been in place in most developed countries for some time now (debuting in the 1960s in the US) and have proved to be generally reliable. However, in the 2016 presidential election, a series of voter database hacking attempts made by Russian agents validated the most common concern about electronic voting technology: cybersecurity. Nonetheless, automated ballot counting remains widespread in major democracies due to its clear-cut benefits, including faster and less labour-intensive counting, as well as easy data analysis in order to extract results.
When it comes to fully online voting models, a combination of wariness and of limited infrastructure development has kept e-voting in a mostly experimental phase worldwide. Some countries have recently tested out new online voting systems that build on Estonia’s astonishing success story in the context of e-government —as a matter of fact, all of Estonia’s public services include an e-service component. Since 2005, the ex-Soviet bloc member offers its citizens the choice between traditional voting or downloading an electronic ballot, which dramatically increased voter turnout — in 2019, a staggering 44% of voters decided to cast their ballot online. Although Estonia witnessed outstanding results from its online voting system, other developed countries like Switzerland, France, and the UK have experienced mitigated outcomes over the last decades, ostensibly due to the lack of proper IT infrastructure and an unfavourable legislative environment.
Through the lens of the Estonia case study, we can see that the main advantage of e-voting comes in the form of increased voter turnout. The sheer accessibility of e-voting allows more citizens to cast their ballots, particularly those with impaired mobility, as well as allowing voters who are discouraged by fixed in-person voting time constraints to vote at their convenience. A ballot can be cast from any location: all the voter needs is their Estonian ID card and a computer with an internet connection. These factors are incredibly relevant in the upcoming election, which is characterized by increased social isolation and by reports of voter intimidation brought on by deep political divides across blue and red voter groups.
Given the significant advantages of e-voting, one might question why online voting systems aren’t implemented in more democracies. The answer lies in the technology behind online voting; given the security concerns surrounding voter fraud, extensive encryption is necessary to result in a safe and functional online voting platform. For instance, the Estonian government used advanced blockchain technology to block malicious interference pioneered by enthusiastic ITC experts. Elections with much higher stakes, like the US presidential election, can expect highly advanced and potentially serious cyberattacks. Indeed, foreign interference in American elections is not unheard of, especially since tensions with other great powers like Russia and China have steadily risen for years. Estonia, with its 1.4 million inhabitants and relatively neutral status, conducts elections that can by no means be compared to the geopolitical and strategic implications of the US presidential election. Nevertheless, their success in e-government is largely attributable to strict IT security measures and public cooperation, two key elements that would prove to be exponentially important if applied on the scale of American ballots.
Compounding concerns over the safety of American online votes, electronic voter registration also raises its fair share of problems. On the security side, ensuring the safety of online registration and voting would require standardized ID systems similar to what was implemented by the Estonian government – but these are not a given everywhere. In other words, online voting platforms would require systematic ways to securely identify voters across the country without any kind of in-person contact. Moreover, safe and secure e-voting registration can only operate under what is known as voter-to-vote matching – that is, a system that keeps track of every voter’s ballot. This attracts a slew of ethical obstacles, as a voter-to-vote matching system goes against the principles of anonymous voting.
Finally, e-voting, unfortunately, has its own accessibility problems; it necessarily requires internet access and the aforementioned standardized identification modalities, both of which have the potential to exclude large parts of the population. However, these concerns can be mitigated by giving citizens a choice between electronic and in-person voting, as demonstrated by Estonia’s hybrid voting model.
While still in its infancy for many of the world’s democracies, online voting technology holds incredible promise for future elections. In a world where in-person voting is becoming increasingly difficult, policymakers are turning to e-voting as the logical solution. Indeed, if well-executed, e-voting could reach more citizens than traditional voting practices, serving to increase voter turnout and resulting in a government that better represents its constituents. However, until innovations in cybersecurity help surmount e-government’s myriad areas of concern, the US still has a long way to go to reap the full benefits of online voting.