Online Voting: Political Science Fiction

by on July 7, 2017 12:30 pm
Categories: summer2017
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  • Enable people to vote online (e-voting) can potentially increase the voter base.
  • Security challenges are preventing states from implementing e-voting.
  • E-voting has to be verifiable for the individual (voter) and universally (ballot).
  • Casting votes online for big scale political elections and votes is still far away.

 

“Online voting will come” says Chris Cruz, Deputy Director and Deputy State Chief Information Officer (CIO) for California. The man who probably knows best where the utilization of technology in the State of California is heading, made this promising statement during his presentation at Stanford University on June 30. However he added that there are still severe security concerns [1]. The two conflicting statements exhibit the hopes and the technical challenges that e-voting faces.   

 

There have been initiatives in different states and countries around the globe to enable online voting. Casting the ballot via computer or mobile phone should in theory have following benefits:

  • Save time as people don’t have to stand in line at polling stations.
  • Make the voting process easier for citizens with disabilities and who live abroad.
  • Motivate young voters because they are typically a less active voter group.

 

On a short side note: E-voting experiences for example in Switzerland have shown hardly any effect on the electorate as an analysis by the Swiss government from 2015 shows [2]. In Norway e-voting got abandoned all together in 2014 after it didn’t boost the turnout and probably even more important, due to security concerns [3].  

 

To be considered secure politicians and IT experts alike agree that an e-voting system for political ballots has to fulfil three requirements [4][5].

  • Vote correctness: The voter’s privacy has to be guaranteed for example with an end-to-end encryption. No one else can read their casted ballot, the voter stays anonymous.
  • Individual verification: Voters have to be able to verify that their vote was accounted for as casted to guarantee the integrity of the system.
  • Universal verification: To make sure that no external or internal entity has manipulated the ballot, the system has to provide mathematical proof of the accuracy of whole electoral.

 

The Spanish encryption company Scytl claims to cover all those requirements. Scytl provides voting technology for 19 out of 21 countries in the world that are currently experimenting with e-voting. Followmyvote.com a competitor has created a system based on blockchain technology. As crypto currency experts have told me in personal discussions, they believe that blockchain technologies could actually provide a potential solution to a secure e-voting system. The challenge to convince people that the technology is save remains.

 

I believe that is what Chris Cruz was referring to; security concerns. The CIO of California emphasized the progress that his State has made pointing to online registration for voters in different counties. Fact is though that in only 35 out of 58 counties (60%) voters can register online (meaning register to vote but not actually vote online).

 

Therefore it is fair to say, that the fast pace progress in information technologies that is especially driven by the Silicon Valley has not translated to a more digital voting system, neither in California nor in other modern societies. This might seem asynchronous. But it is understandable if we are taking into consideration what is on the line: it is the very core substance of a democracy – the voting procedure. Hence, we are left with Chris Cruzes promise that “online voting will come”. The natural question then follows; when? It remains unanswered.

 

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12 comments on “Online Voting: Political Science Fiction”

  1. I personally felt astonished, while volunteering as an election officer in Santa Clara County last November in the general elections, at the excessive costs I felt could be solved through e-voting. Over 80 percent of the 3-page ballots given to our precinct was unused, and I believe many other precincts reflected similar statistics. E-voting, if safe and secure, has the potential to spare these resources which may amount to many tax payer dollars being allocated for better purposes. The electronic voting option at the polls (Not to be confused with online voting) were cumbersome at best and only complicates the rally process when used as an auxiliary means of voting. In fact, only one of a few hundred voters who voted in my poll center actually used the e-voting machine. The disadvantages I witnessed first-hand of voting procedures at polling places including waste of paper, cumbersome equipment, human error when counting ballots (A huge issue in the 2000 US presidential elections as well as at my own poll center) all can be alleviated to a significant degree with the implementation of at-home, online voting when it does achieve the level of security necessary to reassure voters.

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    1. Interesting insider view from a voters perspective. Thank you! In your comment you bring up a topic I have not mentioned in my post. E-voting could have a significant impact on the costs of an election. Depending on how the current voting system is designed the cost saving factor can be more or less significant. If I read your comment, then I gets the impression that for the US it could be quite significant.
      You also mention the issues at the 2000 US presidential elections. In different articles and papers I read these were actually mention as an accelerator for the development of online voting technologies. But as we see today – 17 years later – developing is only one thing implementing is a very different animal.

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  2. The use of blockchain in the future of e-voting is an interesting one, and I do agree that it has the potential to address all the current concerns related to online voting. Even though the technology may be secure enough to fully solve the security and anonymity concerns, civilian adoption on the full and complete scale would be another issue. When can the entire country’s population be fully informed about what blockchain technology is and able to use it for voting purpose? I don’t think the time will come in the next few decades at least. Regular online voting also faces similar adoption issues that would prevent a subset of the population from being able to participate. If we allow for paper based and online voting to exist concurrently, that would also produce the same level of inefficiencies in the process.

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    1. It is not only a question about designing a secure e-voting platform it is also about implementing the new technology. The point you make is very important. Only if the technology overcomes the adoption issue e-voting can be a success. I don’t know if therefore the population really needs to know in detail what blockchain is (if the voting system is based on it) to actually trust it. Or if it will be just a matter of sound communication between the public authorities and the electorate.

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  3. Thank you Samuel for this interesting article. I tend to agree with your conclusions regarding the implementation of the blockchain technology in the current and fragile ballot voting system: It is only a matter of time. Blockchain is more than just a distributed network and its democratization among voters is crucial.
    However, I believe this concept is used at every opportunity and sometimes without having an actual look in depth. Blockchain is just a idea, its application in the voting process would be extremely complicated as experts would need to re-design the algorithm and the set of rules to which all the parties cannot deviate.
    Although followmyvote seems to be on the right track, they are still very far away from being accepted by a national government.

    On the bright side, besides allowing vote correctness and individual and universal verification, the blockchain technology, if well used, would also prevent voters from voting twice with the double-check service. The “security” issue you mentioned in your post was a reference to cyber-attacks I believe. The blockchain technology would also outperformed online voting platform as hackers could not easily take control of a distributed system compared to a classic centralized one. They would need to control the majority of the “nodes” which would get almost impossible with a large number of voters using this technology.

    Overall, this article was a great introduction to the issues faced by the current voting system. Thank you Samuel!

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    1. Dear Victor, thank you very much for your thoughts on the topic. As you mentioned there are still issues with e-voting: technological and psychological issues.
      If I interpret your thoughts correctly you are focusing on the technology of online voting. You’re mentioning the complexity to build the blockchain so it can handle an election. Exactly that is what Followmyvote claims to have programmed. Since their solution hasn’t been in use so far, we don’t know if it could handle a large scale political election. As Kyle Durfee describes in his blogpost the two best know blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, are both having scaling problems. But such technical problems can be solved. What brings me to the psychological side of voting.
      If voters have the impression the voting system is not secure and the results can be/ will be manipulated, then the foundation of a democracy is put into question. In my opinion that a very severe situation.
      Thus, Chris Cruz’ statement about security issues can be interpreted as a technological issue (hackers), or psychological issue (trust).

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  4. Hey Samuel, I thought this topic was quite interesting as well and I like the angle you took. The other side of the equation behind building the platform/software for e-voting is…what kind of hardware and features are required to make e-voting a real possibility? These days most smart phones have rolled out different types of biometric security features, but the reality is a lot of voters out there particularly in low incomes jurisdictions might not have the hardware to vote securely. One of the benefits that’s been touted for e-voting is increasing voter turnout and allowing easier access to voting. There is a tipping point where the built in security for hardware and the proliferation of these technologies becomes ubiquitous, it just might be a bit further out than we think.

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    1. Thanks Johnny for your comment. A important point I haven’t looked at in particular.
      Especially if you look at low incomes jurisdictions where voters might not have the hardware to vote securely. But not only in low income jurisdictions. Also in industrialised regions there is still a part of the population that does not have the hardware necessary to actually cast the their vote online. I am thinking particularly of a older generation that is not connected the way we are used to it.
      I believe that e-voting therefore can be only one of several different options to cast your vote. For a disconnected minority physical ballots or voting by letter must still be an option.

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  5. Thanks for an enlightening view into how electronic voting systems have been implemented outside the United States. I’m curious to know why electronic voting systems have not been as successful in the other countries that you noted. Anecdotally, the biggest excuse that I hear for people not voting in the US is a lack of time. Something like this may be able to help resolve that issue. Furthermore, I think that electronic voting systems should first be rolled out at the local and state levels first before it’s implemented in a national election. This will provide governments with the time necessary to ramp up and test the necessary security features before a national election, where the stakes are much higher for hackers who hope to disrupt the process.

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    1. I agree with you Jega. The roll out of an e-voting system should be done slowl. Start with a municipality or state, gain some experience and confidence first. Switzerland is in such a step by step process. First voters that live abroad could vote online. Then certain states allowed e-voting. The move to the federal level has yet to be implemented though. I guess that will still take quite some time.

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  7. For sure online voting will come. It is even a surprise that everything has turned digital by now except democracy. Why is the rate of development in this sector so slow? We are able to secure online bank transactions, Government secrets and strategies, huge company transactions e.t.c on the internet; yet these are the most security and privacy dependent issues; how are we not able to do this in voting? Maybe its not a matter of ‘possibility’ but a matter of ‘transparency’. Maybe the governments are not just ready to change yet; might it be because they benefit from the flaws of the current voting system? I may not know. I many government election reports, especially in developing countries, we hear so much about rigging. There are so many points of errors and vulnerabilities in the current voting system that can be solved by a well designed, tightly verified, correct and secure voting system. If block-chain promises that, why dont we try the technology out?

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