How electronic voting could improve voters' trust
In many countries, electronic voting and other technologies are already transforming how citizens engage with local and national government.
The key issue, panelists at an on voting technology in Washington DC said on Friday, is building trust between voters and election officials, especially in local races, where fears of corruption facilitated by local parties remains a concern. 聽
While electronic voting machines have steadily made inroads in countries such as Brazil and India, which have developed their own technologies without the assistance of a for-profit voting that has faced in the United States, in many African countries the focus is on technologies that help count votes and aid voter identification, a United Nations official said during Friday鈥檚 discussion.
The US also presents a different challenge because elections are more decentralized than in Brazil or India, some panelists said.
鈥淓lections belong to the people,鈥� Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of state, said during a keynote address at the event hosted by the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank. 鈥淐itizens not only have the right to honest and accurate elections, they have the right to know that their ballots are kept secret and that elections are in fact authentic, because this knowledge provides the basis for public trust.鈥�
In Brazil, a series of audits and checks during and after elections take place to ensure the process remains fair, said Justice Jose Antonio Dias Toffoli, who oversees elections as president of the country鈥檚 Supreme Electoral Court.
The judiciary has overseen elections in Brazil since 1932, and began testing in 1996 before transitioning to e-voting exclusively four years later. Because the judges who focus on elections rotate and have only two-year terms, he said, 鈥渋t became a system truthfully by the people.鈥�
鈥淲e don鈥檛 use a Web system, the machines are isolated, and when the [election] day finishes, we print a receipt of the results of the ballot for parties to review,鈥� Mr. Dias Toffoli said during a panel discussion. He added that in years without an election, the courts have invited hackers to try to get into the system in order to improve its safety.
India鈥檚 history with goes back even further, to 1989, the country鈥檚 former information minister said, with India first testing electronic voting in provincial elections in 1998.
鈥淲e stumbled on electronic voting by accident, because we were trying to prevent ballot stuffing in some of our states,鈥� said Manish Tewari, who served as the country鈥檚 minister of information and broadcasting from 2012 to 2014.
鈥淒o people trust it 100 percent? The answer to that is no.... There are questions asked all the time, especially by those who lose,鈥� he said, drawing laughter from the crowd. 鈥淏ut the reason it鈥檚 been successful is because people trust the institution, which is separate in the Indian constitution.鈥�
Many countries 鈥� particularly those without a longstanding tradition of holding independent elections 鈥� also struggle to balance issues of maintaining voters鈥� trust with the cost of introducing reforms such as voter identification and electronic voting.
鈥淲hen you have countries like Brazil and India, they have ownership of their technology, but in most countries supported by the United Nations, they have to bring not only the hardware, but also the whole expertise to make it happen, and that鈥檚 why we have cases in which it works and cases in which it doesn鈥檛,鈥� said Tadjoudine Ali-Diabacte, deputy director of the electoral assistance division at the United Nations鈥� department of political affairs.
Mr. Ali-Diabacte noted that electronic voting had been successful in Namibia and Nigeria despite being of vastly different sizes.
Internet voting poses an additional challenge, several panelists said, with some arguing that it would be inevitable and improve voter access.
鈥淭he ultimate end of it all is something where it鈥檚 not just that we vote online, but we have a much broader electronic engagement with our government, where we鈥檙e able to express our views in a continuing way,鈥� said Mark Malloch-Brown, a former UN deputy secretary general who now serves as chairman of Smartmatic, a voting technology company headquartered in London.
鈥淲e feel that electronic Internet-based methods have allowed us an engagement with our democracy which we currently don鈥檛 have through just the once every-four-year vote [in the US],鈥� he added.
But others said there were longstanding security concerns around Internet voting, noting that hacking could become a new form of ballot-stuffing.
鈥淪uppose my vote is going to be routed by some server in Los Angeles and then come back and be counted by some electoral official in Delhi, it鈥檚 too much of a long time to travel,鈥� said Mr. Tewari, the Indian information minister. 鈥淎 lot can happen in between, and I don鈥檛 think people are going to be comfortable with that.鈥�
The specter of the 2000 US election hung over much the discussion. During 鈥� where as many as four to six million votes were lost due to many voters鈥� inability to register, voting machine problems, and disputed voter counts 鈥� a controversial recount in Florida led Republican George W. Bush to prevail over Democrat Al Gore.
鈥淭he choice of voting technology is not just a technical question,鈥� Ms. Albright said, noting the improvements in voting technology since reports of hanging chads dominated headlines. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a public policy matter, because it can help determine whether an election is viewed as credible.鈥�
