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Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is
voting Voting is a method by which a group, such as a meeting or an electorate, can engage for the purpose of making a collective decision or expressing an opinion usually following discussions, debates or election campaigns. Democracies elect holde ...
that uses
electronic Electronic may refer to: *Electronics, the science of how to control electric energy in semiconductor * ''Electronics'' (magazine), a defunct American trade journal *Electronic storage, the storage of data using an electronic device *Electronic co ...
means to either aid or take care of casting and counting
ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...
s. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone ''
electronic voting machine An electronic voting machine is a voting machine based on electronics. Two main technologies exist: '' optical scanning'' and '' direct recording'' (DRE). Optical scanning In an optical scan voting system, or marksense, each voter's choices ...
s'' (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet (online voting). It may encompass a range of
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
services, from basic transmission of tabulated results to full-function online voting through common connectable household devices. The degree of
automation Automation describes a wide range of technologies that reduce human intervention in processes, namely by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machines ...
may be limited to marking a paper ballot, or may be a comprehensive system of vote input, vote recording, data encryption and transmission to servers, and consolidation and tabulation of election results. A worthy e-voting system must perform most of these tasks while complying with a set of standards established by regulatory bodies, and must also be capable to deal successfully with strong requirements associated with
security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
,
accuracy Accuracy and precision are two measures of ''observational error''. ''Accuracy'' is how close a given set of measurements ( observations or readings) are to their ''true value'', while ''precision'' is how close the measurements are to each oth ...
, integrity, swiftness, privacy, auditability, accessibility, cost-effectiveness,
scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...
and
ecological Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...
sustainability. Electronic voting technology can include
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
s,
optical scan voting system An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results. History Marksense systems While mark sense technology dates back to the 1930s and optical mark recogn ...
s and specialized voting kiosks (including self-contained direct-recording electronic voting systems, or DRE). It can also involve transmission of
ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...
s and votes via telephones, private
computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...
s, or the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
. In general, two main types of e-voting can be identified: * e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations); * remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting) where the voter submits his or her vote electronically to the election authorities, from any location.


Benefits

Electronic voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are expected to decrease. Results can be reported and published faster. Voters save time and cost by being able to vote independently from their location. This may increase overall voter turnout. The citizen groups benefiting most from electronic elections are the ones living abroad, citizens living in rural areas far away from polling stations and the disabled with mobility impairments.Cook, T. (2016, December 7). How Electronic Voting Works: Pros and Cons vs. paper Voting. ''MUO''. Retrieved June 10, 2019 from https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-electronic-voting-works/


Concerns

It has been demonstrated that as voting systems become more complex and include software, different methods of election fraud become possible. Others also challenge the use of electronic voting from a theoretical point of view, arguing that humans are not equipped for verifying operations occurring within an electronic machine and that because people cannot verify these operations, the operations cannot be trusted. Furthermore, some computing experts have argued for the broader notion that people cannot trust any programming they did not author. The use of electronic voting in elections remains a contentious issue. Some countries such as Netherlands and Germany have stopped using it after it was shown to be unreliable, while the Indian Election commission recommends it. The involvement of numerous stakeholders including companies that manufacture these machines as well as political parties that stand to gain from rigging complicates this further. Critics of electronic voting, including security analyst
Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...
, note that "computer security experts are unanimous on what to do (some voting experts disagree, but it is the computer security experts who need to be listened to; the problems here are with the computer, not with the fact that the computer is being used in a voting application)... DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit trails... Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny" to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Verifiable ballots are necessary because computers can and do malfunction, and because voting machines can be compromised. Many insecurities have been found in commercial voting machines, such as using a default administration password. Cases have also been reported of machines making unpredictable, inconsistent errors. Key issues with electronic voting are therefore the openness of a system to public examination from outside experts, the creation of an authenticatable paper record of votes cast and a chain of custody for records. And, there is a risk that commercial voting machines results are changed by the company providing the machine. There is no guarantee that results are collected and reported accurately. There has been contention, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could facilitate electoral fraud and may not be fully auditable. In addition, electronic voting has been criticised as unnecessary and expensive to introduce. While countries like
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
continue to use electronic voting, several countries have cancelled e-voting systems or decided against a large-scale rollout, notably the
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,
Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
,
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
and the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
due to issues in reliability of EVMs. Moreover, people without internet access and/or the skills to use it are excluded from the service. The so-called digital divide describes the gap between those who have access to the internet and those who do not. Depending on the country or even regions in a country the gap differs. This concern is expected to become less important in future since the number of internet users tends to increase. The main psychological issue is trust. Voters fear that their vote could be changed by a virus on their PC or during transmission to governmental servers. Expenses for the installation of an electronic voting system are high. For some governments they may be too high so that they do not invest. This aspect is even more important if it is not sure whether electronic voting is a long-term solution.


Types of system


Electronic voting machines

Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the 1960s when
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...
systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the USA where 7 counties switched to this method for the 1964 presidential election. The newer
optical scan voting system An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results. History Marksense systems While mark sense technology dates back to the 1930s and optical mark recogn ...
s allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot.
DRE voting machine A DRE voting machine, or direct-recording electronic voting machine, records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter. These are typically buttons or a touchsc ...
s which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
and
India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
, and also on a large scale in
Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...
and the United States. They have been used on a large scale in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
but have been decommissioned after public concerns. In Brazil, the use of DRE voting machines has been associated with a decrease error-ridden and uncounted votes, promoting a larger enfranchisement of mainly less educated people in the electoral process, shifting government spending toward public healthcare, particularly beneficial to the poor.


Paper-based electronic voting system

Paper-based voting systems originated as a system where votes are cast and counted by hand, using paper ballots. With the advent of electronic tabulation came systems where paper cards or sheets could be marked by hand, but counted electronically. These systems included punched card voting, marksense and later digital pen voting systems. These systems can include a
ballot marking device A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...
or electronic ballot marker that allows voters to make their selections using an electronic input device, usually a
touch screen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...
system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot marking device can incorporate different forms of assistive technology. In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the 'Dechert Design', a General Public License open source paper ballot printing system with open source
bar codes A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly referred to as linear or o ...
on each ballot.


Direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting system

A direct-recording electronic (DRE)
voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use '' electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defi ...
records votes by means of a
ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...
display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a
touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...
); that processes data with computer software; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as a printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. These systems use a precinct count method that tabulates ballots at the polling place. They typically tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results after the close of polling. In 2002, in the United States, the
Help America Vote Act The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (), or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002.United States Department of Justice Civil Rights ...
mandated that one handicapped accessible voting system be provided per polling place, which most jurisdictions have chosen to satisfy with the use of DRE voting machines, some switching entirely over to DRE. In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type of direct recording electronic voting system, up from 7.7% in 1996. In 2004, India adopted
Electronic Voting Machines An electronic voting machine is a voting machine based on electronics. Two main technologies exist: '' optical scanning'' and '' direct recording'' (DRE). Optical scanning In an optical scan voting system, or marksense, each voter's choices ...
(EVM) for its elections to its parliament with 380 million voters casting their ballots using more than one million voting machines. The Indian EVMs are designed and developed by two government-owned defence equipment manufacturing units,
Bharat Electronics Limited Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) is an Indian Government-owned aerospace and defence electronics company. It primarily manufactures advanced electronic products for ground and aerospace applications. BEL is one of nine PSUs under the Ministry ...
(BEL) and
Electronics Corporation of India Limited Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL) ( ईलेक्ट्रॉनिक्स कॉर्पोरेशन ऑफ ईन्डिया लिमिटेड ( ) ) is a Public Sector Enterprise under the Department of Atomic ...
(ECIL). Both systems are identical, and are developed to the specifications of Election Commission of India. The system is a set of two devices running on 7.5 volt batteries. One device, the voting Unit is used by the voter, and another device called the control unit is operated by the electoral officer. Both units are connected by a five-metre cable. The voting unit has a blue button for each candidate. The unit can hold 16 candidates, but up to four units can be chained, to accommodate 64 candidates. The control unit has three buttons on the surface – one button to release a single vote, one button to see the total number of votes cast till now, and one button to close the election process. The result button is hidden and sealed. It cannot be pressed unless the close button has already been pressed. A controversy was raised when the voting machine malfunctioned which was shown in Delhi assembly. On 9 April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the ECI to increase
voter-verified paper audit trail Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow ...
(VVPAT) slips vote count to five randomly selected EVMs per assembly constituency, which means ECI has to count VVPAT slips of 20,625 EVMs before it certifies the final election results.


=Public network DRE voting system

= A public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to another location over a public network. Vote data may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast, periodically as batches of ballots throughout the election day, or as one batch at the close of voting. Public network DRE voting system can utilize either precinct count or central count method. The central count method tabulates ballots from multiple precincts at a central location.


Online voting

Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in
Estonia Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, a ...
, and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France. Internet voting has also been widely used in sub-national
participatory budgeting Participatory budgeting (PB) is a type of citizen sourcing in which ordinary people decide how to allocate part of a municipal or public budget through a process of democratic deliberation and decision-making. Participatory budgeting allows ...
processes, including in Brazil, France, United States, Portugal and Spain. Security experts have found security problems in every attempt at online voting,"Secure Internet voting will likely not be feasible in the near future... At the present time, the Internet (or any network connected to the Internet) should not be used for the return of marked ballots" "Electronic ballot return faces significant security risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of voted ballots. These risks can ultimately affect the tabulation and results and, can occur at scale... Even with ... technical security considerations, electronic ballot return remains a high-risk activity." including systems in Australia, Estonia,"The OSCE/ODIHR EAM was made aware of a program that could, if it was running on a voter’s computer, change the vote without the possibility for the voter to detect it. The case was brought to the attention of the project manager who assessed this threat to be theoretically plausible but nearly impossible to implement in reality." Switzerland, Russia, and the United States. It has been argued political parties that have more support from the less fortunate—who are unfamiliar with the Internet—may suffer in the elections due to e-voting, which tends to increase voting in the upper/middle class. It is unsure as to whether narrowing the digital divide would promote equal voting opportunities for people across various social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. In the long run, this is contingent not only on internet accessibility but also depends on people's level of familiarity with the Internet. The effects of internet voting on overall voter turnout are unclear. A 2017 study of online voting in two Swiss cantons found that it had no effect on turnout, and a 2009 study of Estonia's national election found similar results. To the contrary, however, the introduction of online voting in municipal elections in the Canadian province of
Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
resulted in an average increase in turnout of around 3.5 percentage points. Similarly, a further study of the Swiss case found that while online voting did not increase overall turnout, it did induce some occasional voters to participate who would have abstained were online voting not an option. A paper on “remote electronic voting and turnout in the Estonian 2007 parliamentary elections” showed that rather than eliminating inequalities, e-voting might have enhanced the digital divide between higher and lower socioeconomic classes. People who lived greater distances from polling areas voted at higher levels with this service now available. The 2007 Estonian elections yielded a higher voter turnout from those who lived in higher income regions and who received formal education. Still regarding the Estonian Internet voting system, it was proved to be more cost-efficient than the rest of the voting systems offered in 2017 local elections. Electronic voting is perceived to be favored moreover by a certain demographic, namely the younger generation such as Generation X and Y voters. However, in recent elections about a quarter of e-votes were cast by the older demographic, such as individuals over the age of 55. Including this, about 20% of e-votes came from voters between the ages of 45 and 54. This goes to show that e-voting is not supported exclusively by the younger generations, but finding some popularity amongst Gen X and Baby Boomers as well. In terms of electoral results as well, the expectation that online voting would favor younger candidates has not been borne out in the data, with mayors in Ontario, Canada who were elected in online elections actually being slightly older on average than those elected by pencil and paper. Online voting is widely used privately for shareholder votes, and other private organizations. The election management companies do not promise accuracy or privacy.Election Services Co. ProxyVote Proxydirect In fact one company uses an individual's past votes for research, and to target ads. Corporations and organizations routinely use Internet voting to elect officers and board members and for other proxy elections. Internet voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and publicly in the United States, the UK, Switzerland and Estonia. In Switzerland, where it is already an established part of local referendums, voters get their passwords to access the ballot through the postal service. Most voters in Estonia can cast their vote in local and parliamentary elections, if they want to, via the Internet, as most of those on the electoral roll have access to an e-voting system, the largest run by any
European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been de ...
country. It has been made possible because most Estonians carry a national identity card equipped with a computer-readable microchip and it is these cards which they use to get access to the online ballot. All a voter needs is a computer, an electronic card reader, their ID card and its PIN, and they can vote from anywhere in the world. Estonian e-votes can only be cast during the days of advance voting. On election day itself people have to go to polling stations and fill in a paper ballot.


Hybrid systems

There are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot marking device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other assistive technology to print a
voter verified paper audit trail Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow ...
, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation. Internet voting can use remote locations (voting from any Internet capable computer) or can use traditional polling locations with voting booths consisting of Internet connected voting systems.


Analysis

Electronic voting systems may offer advantages compared to other voting techniques. An electronic voting system can be involved in any one of a number of steps in the setup, distributing, voting, collecting, and counting of ballots, and thus may or may not introduce advantages into any of these steps. Potential disadvantages exist as well including the potential for flaws or weakness in any electronic component. Charles Stewart of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in the 2004 USA presidential election than in 2000 because electronic voting machines detected votes that paper-based machines would have missed. In May 2004 the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report titled "Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges", analyzing both the benefits and concerns created by electronic voting. A second report was released in September 2005 detailing some of the concerns with electronic voting, and ongoing improvements, titled "Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed".


Electronic ballots

Electronic voting systems may use ''electronic ballot'' to store votes in
computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term '' primary storag ...
. Systems which use them exclusively are called DRE voting systems. When electronic ballots are used there is no risk of exhausting the supply of ballots. Additionally, these electronic ballots remove the need for printing of paper ballots, a significant cost. When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are required by the
National Voting Rights Act of 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the civil rights movement ...
), electronic ballots can be programmed to provide ballots in multiple languages for a single machine. The advantage with respect to ballots in different languages appears to be unique to electronic voting. For example,
King County, Washington King County is located in the U.S. state of Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 census, making it the most populous county in Washington, and the 13th-most populous in the United States. The county seat is Seattle, also the ...
's demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese. With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how many Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at each polling place, etc. Any strategy that can assure that Chinese-language ballots will be available at all polling places is certain, at the very least, to result in a significant number of wasted ballots. (The situation with lever machines would be even worse than with paper: the only apparent way to reliably meet the need would be to set up a Chinese-language lever machine at each polling place, few of which would be used at all.) Critics argue the need for extra ballots in any language can be mitigated by providing a process to print ballots at voting locations. They argue further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust validation, installation validation, delivery validation and validation of other steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive, thus electronic ballots are not guaranteed to be less costly than printed ballots.


Accessibility

Electronic voting machines can be made fully accessible for persons with disabilities. Punched card and optical scan machines are not fully accessible for the blind or visually impaired, and lever machines can be difficult for voters with limited mobility and strength. Electronic machines can use headphones, sip and puff, foot pedals, joy sticks and other adaptive technology to provide the necessary accessibility. Organizations such as the Verified Voting Foundation have criticized the accessibility of electronic voting machines and advocate alternatives. Some disabled voters (including the visually impaired) could use a tactile ballot, a ballot system using physical markers to indicate where a mark should be made, to vote a secret paper ballot. These ballots can be designed identically to those used by other voters. However, other disabled voters (including voters with dexterity disabilities) could be unable to use these ballots.


Cryptographic verification

The concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions has emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and trust in electronic voting systems. It allows voters and election observers to verify that votes have been recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of verifiability are considered: individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability allows a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome, universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote in the election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.


Voter intent

Electronic voting machines are able to provide immediate feedback to the voter detecting such possible problems as undervoting and overvoting which may result in a spoiled ballot. This immediate feedback can be helpful in successfully determining voter intent.


Transparency

It has been alleged by groups such as the UK-based
Open Rights Group The Open Rights Group (ORG) is a UK-based organisation that works to preserve digital rights and freedoms by campaigning on digital rights issues and by fostering a community of grassroots activists. It campaigns on numerous issues including ma ...
that a lack of testing, inadequate audit procedures, and insufficient attention given to system or process design with electronic voting leaves "elections open to error and fraud". In 2009, the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany The Federal Constitutional Court (german: link=no, Bundesverfassungsgericht ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme constitutional court for the Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law () of Germany. Since its in ...
found that when using voting machines the "verification of the result must be possible by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject." The DRE Nedap-computers used till then did not fulfill that requirement. The decision did not ban electronic voting as such, but requires all essential steps in elections to be subject to public examinability. In 2013, The California Association of Voting Officials was formed to maintain efforts toward publicly owned General Public License open source voting systems


Coercion evidence

In 2013, researchers from Europe proposed that the electronic voting systems should be coercion evident.Gurchetan S Grewal, Mark D Ryan, Sergiu Bursuc, Peter Y A Ryan. Caveat Coercitor: coercion-evidence in electronic voting. 34th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, 2013 There should be a public evidence of the amount of coercion that took place in a particular elections. An internet voting system called " Caveat Coercitor" shows how coercion evidence in voting systems can be achieved.


Audit trails

A fundamental challenge with any
voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use '' electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defi ...
is to produce evidence that the votes were recorded as cast and tabulated as recorded. Election results produced by voting systems that rely on voter-marked paper ballots can be verified with manual hand counts (either valid sampling or full recounts).
Paperless A paperless office (or paper-free office) is a work environment in which the use of paper is eliminated or greatly reduced. This is done by converting documents and other papers into digital form, a process known as digitization. Proponents claim t ...
ballot voting systems must support auditability in different ways. An independently auditable system, sometimes called an Independent Verification, can be used in recounts or audits. These systems can include the ability for voters to verify how their votes were cast or enable officials to verify that votes were tabulated correctly. A discussion draft argued by researchers at the
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
(NIST) states, "Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important." The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors, computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these statements are not report conclusions." Various technologies can be used to assure DRE voters that their votes were cast correctly, and allow officials to detect possible fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the tabulated results. Some systems include technologies such as cryptography (visual or mathematical), paper (kept by the voter or verified and left with election officials), audio verification, and dual recording or witness systems (other than with paper). Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, the creator of the
Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters using a ballotless voting system. A VVPAT is intended as an independent verification system for voting machines designed to allow ...
(VVPAT) concept (as described in her Ph.D. dissertation in October 2000 on the basic voter verifiable ballot system), proposes to answer the auditability question by having the voting machine print a paper ballot or other paper facsimile that can be visually verified by the voter before being entered into a secure location. Subsequently, this is sometimes referred to as the " Mercuri method." To be truly ''voter''-verified, the record itself must be verified by the voter and able to be done without assistance, such as visually or audibly. If the voter must use a bar-code scanner or other electronic device to verify, then the record is not truly voter-verifiable, since it is actually the electronic device that is verifying the record for the voter. VVPAT is the form of Independent Verification most commonly found in
elections in the United States Elections in the United States are held for government officials at the federal, state, and local levels. At the federal level, the nation's head of state, the president, is elected indirectly by the people of each state, through an Ele ...
and other countries such as Venezuela.
End-to-end auditable voting systems End-to-end auditable or end-to-end voter verifiable (E2E) systems are voting systems with stringent integrity properties and strong tamper resistance. E2E systems often employ cryptographic methods to craft receipts that allow voters to verify t ...
can provide the voter with a receipt that can be taken home. This receipt does not allow voters to prove to others how they voted, but it does allow them to verify that the system detected their vote correctly. End-to-end (E2E) systems include Punchscan, ThreeBallot and
Prêt à Voter Prêt à Voter is an E2E voting system devised by Peter Ryan of the University of Luxembourg. It aims to provide guarantees of accuracy of the count and ballot privacy that are independent of software, hardware etc. Assurance of accuracy flows f ...
. Scantegrity is an add-on that extends current optical scan voting systems with an E2E layer. The city of
Takoma Park, Maryland Takoma Park is a city in Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. It is a suburb of Washington, and part of the Washington metropolitan area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea City", is a Tree C ...
used
Scantegrity II Scantegrity is a security enhancement for optical scan voting systems, providing such systems with end-to-end (E2E) verifiability of election results. It uses confirmation codes to allow a voter to prove to themselves that their ballot is included ...
for its November, 2009 election. Systems that allow the voter to prove how they voted are never used in U.S. public elections, and are outlawed by most state constitutions. The primary concerns with this solution are
voter intimidation Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share of ...
and vote selling. An audit system can be used in measured random recounts to detect possible malfunction or fraud. With the VVPAT method, the paper ballot is often treated as the official ballot of record. In this scenario, the ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an initial count. In any subsequent recounts or challenges, the paper, not the electronic ballot, would be used for tabulation. Whenever a paper record serves as the legal ballot, that system will be subject to the same benefits and concerns as any paper ballot system. To successfully audit any voting machine, a strict
chain of custody Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particula ...
is required. The solution was first demonstrated (New York City, March 2001) and used (Sacramento, California 2002) by AVANTE International Technology, Inc.. In 2004 Nevada was the first state to successfully implement a DRE voting system that printed an electronic record. The $9.3 million voting system provided by Sequoia Voting Systems included more than 2,600 AVC EDGE touchscreen DREs equipped with the VeriVote VVPAT component. The new systems, implemented under the direction of then Secretary of State
Dean Heller Dean Arthur Heller (born May 10, 1960) is an American businessman and politician who served as a United States senator for Nevada from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 15th secretary of state of Nevada from 1995 ...
replaced largely punched card voting systems and were chosen after feedback was solicited from the community through town hall meetings and input solicited from the
Nevada Gaming Control Board The Nevada Gaming Control Board, also known as the State Gaming Control Board, is a Nevada state governmental agency involved in the regulation of gaming and law enforcement of Nevada gaming laws throughout the state, along with the Nevada Gaming ...
.


Hardware

Inadequately secured hardware can be subject to physical tampering. Some critics, such as the group " Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet" ("We do not trust voting machines"), charge that, for instance, foreign hardware could be inserted into the machine, or between the user and the central mechanism of the machine itself, using a
man in the middle attack In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle, monster-in-the-middle, machine-in-the-middle, monkey-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle (MITM), person-in-the-middle (PITM) or adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) ...
technique, and thus even sealing DRE machines may not be sufficient protection. This claim is countered by the position that review and testing procedures can detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are present, and that a thorough, verifiable
chain of custody Chain of custody (CoC), in legal contexts, is the chronological documentation or paper trail that records the sequence of custody, control, transfer, analysis, and disposition of materials, including physical or electronic evidence. Of particula ...
would prevent the insertion of such hardware or software. Security seals are commonly employed in an attempt to detect tampering, but testing by Argonne National Laboratory and others demonstrates that existing seals can usually be quickly defeated by a trained person using low-tech methods.


Software

Security experts, such as
Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Cente ...
, have demanded that voting machine
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the w ...
should be publicly available for inspection. Others have also suggested publishing voting machine software under a
free software license A free-software license is a notice that grants the recipient of a piece of software extensive rights to modify and redistribute that software. These actions are usually prohibited by copyright law, but the rights-holder (usually the author) ...
as is done in Australia.


Testing and certification

One method to detect errors with voting machines is parallel testing, which are conducted on the Election Day with randomly picked machines. The ACM published a study showing that, to change the outcome of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, only 2 votes in each precinct would have needed to be changed.


Cost

Cost of having electronic machines receive the voter's choices, print a ballot and scan the ballots to tally results is higher than the cost of printing blank ballots, having voters mark them directly (with machine-marking only when voters want it) and scanning ballots to tally results, according to studies in Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.


Adoption worldwide


In popular culture

In the 2006 film ''Man of the Year'' starring
Robin Williams Robin McLaurin Williams (July 21, 1951August 11, 2014) was an American actor and comedian. Known for his improvisational skills and the wide variety of characters he created on the spur of the moment and portrayed on film, in dramas and come ...
, the character played by Williams—a comedic host of political talk show—wins the election for President of the United States when a software error in the electronic voting machines produced by the fictional manufacturer Delacroy causes votes to be tallied inaccurately. In ''Runoff'', a 2007 novel by
Mark Coggins Mark Coggins is the Choctaw and American author of a series of novels featuring private eye protagonist August Riordan. He is also a photographer. Biography Coggins was born in New Mexico in 1957 and attended Stanford University, where he ear ...
, a surprising showing by the
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as social justice, environmentalism and nonviolence. Greens believe that these issues are inherently related to one another as a foundation f ...
candidate in a San Francisco Mayoral election forces a
runoff Runoff, run-off or RUNOFF may refer to: * RUNOFF, the first computer text-formatting program * Runoff or run-off, another name for bleed, printing that lies beyond the edges to which a printed sheet is trimmed * Runoff or run-off, a stock marke ...
between him and the highly favored establishment candidate—a plot line that closely parallels the actual results of the 2003 election. When the private-eye protagonist of the book investigates at the behest of a powerful Chinatown businesswoman, he determines that the outcome was rigged by someone who defeated the security on the city's newly installed e-voting system. " Hacking Democracy" is a 2006
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...
shown on HBO. Filmed over three years, it documents American citizens investigating anomalies and irregularities with electronic voting systems that occurred during America's 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems and culminates in the hacking of a
Diebold Diebold Nixdorf is an American multinational financial and retail technology company that specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point ...
election system in Leon County, Florida. The central conflict in the MMO video game
Infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...
resulted from the global institution of direct democracy through the use of personal voting devices sometime in the 22nd century AD. The practice gave rise to a 'voting class' of citizens composed mostly of homemakers and retirees who tended to be at home all day. Because they had the most free time to participate in voting, their opinions ultimately came to dominate politics.


See also

* Certification of voting machines * E-democracy * Electoral fraud * Electronic referendum * Soft error * Vote counting system *
Voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use '' electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defi ...
;Electronic voting manufacturers * AccuPoll *
Bharat Electronics Limited Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) is an Indian Government-owned aerospace and defence electronics company. It primarily manufactures advanced electronic products for ground and aerospace applications. BEL is one of nine PSUs under the Ministry ...
(India) *
Dominion Voting Systems Dominion Voting Systems Corporation is a company that sells electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in the United States and Canada. The company's headquarters are in Toronto, Ontario, and Denver, Colo ...
(Canada) * Electronics Corporation of India Ltd * ES&S (United States) *
Hart InterCivic Hart InterCivic Inc. is a privately held United States company that provides election technologies and services to government jurisdictions. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Hart products are used by hundreds of jurisdictions nationwide, including co ...
(United States) *
Nedap Nedap (N.V. Nederlandsche Apparatenfabriek; ) is a Dutch multinational technology company. Its principal place of business is Groenlo, Netherlands. It has subsidiaries in the United States, Belgium, France, Germany, UK, the Netherlands and Spain, ...
(
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
) *
Premier Election Solutions Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (DESI), was a subsidiary of Diebold that made and sold voting machines. In 2009, it was sold to competitor ES&S. In 2010, Dominion Voting Systems purchased the primary asset ...
(formerly Diebold Election Systems) (United States) * Safevote * Sequoia Voting Systems (United States) *
Scytl Scytl Election Technologies S.L.U. (also stylized SCYTL) is a Spanish provider of electronic voting systems and election technology. Founded in 2001 in Barcelona, its products and services are used in elections and referendums across the world. ...
(Spain) * Smartmatic ;Academic efforts * Bingo Voting * DRE-i and DRE-ip *
Prêt à Voter Prêt à Voter is an E2E voting system devised by Peter Ryan of the University of Luxembourg. It aims to provide guarantees of accuracy of the count and ballot privacy that are independent of software, hardware etc. Assurance of accuracy flows f ...
* Punchscan


References


External links


Electronic Vote around the World – Smartmatic

Election Assistance Commission

Vote.NIST.gov
the
National Institute of Standards and Technology The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...
Help America Vote Act The Help America Vote Act of 2002 (), or HAVA, is a United States federal law which passed in the House 357-48 and 92-2 in the Senate and was signed into law by President Bush on October 29, 2002.United States Department of Justice Civil Rights ...
page
An Electronic Voting Case Study in KCA University, Kenya

The Election Technology Library research list
a comprehensive list of research relating to technology use in elections
E-Voting information
fro
ACE Project

How do we vote in India with Electronic Voting machine
*
NPR
summary of current technology status in the states of the U.S., as of May 2008
Internet Voting in Estonia

Progetto Salento eVoting
a project for an e-voting test in Melpignano e Martignano (Lecce – Italy) designed by Prof. Marco Mancarella University of Salento * a review of existing electronic voting systems and its verification systems in supervised environments
Open Counting




{{DEFAULTSORT:Electronic Voting Elections Voting