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Electronic voting is
voting Voting is the process of choosing officials or policies by casting a ballot, a document used by people to formally express their preferences. Republics and representative democracies are governments where the population chooses representative ...
that uses electronic means to either aid or handle 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 voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...
s including voting time. 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 scan voting system, optical scanning'' and ''direct-recording electronic voting machine, direct recording'' (DRE). Optical scanning ...
s'' (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet (online voting). It may encompass a range of Internet 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, mainly by predetermining decision criteria, subprocess relationships, and related actions, as well as embodying those predeterminations in machine ...
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 Security is protection from, or resilience against, potential harm (or other unwanted coercion). Beneficiaries (technically referents) of security may be persons and social groups, objects and institutions, ecosystems, or any other entity or ...
,
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''. ''Precision'' is how close the measurements are to each other. The ...
,
speed In kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a non-negative scalar quantity. Intro ...
,
privacy Privacy (, ) is the ability of an individual or group to seclude themselves or information about themselves, and thereby express themselves selectively. The domain of privacy partially overlaps with security, which can include the concepts of a ...
, auditability, accessibility,
data integrity Data integrity is the maintenance of, and the assurance of, data accuracy and consistency over its entire Information Lifecycle Management, life-cycle. It is a critical aspect to the design, implementation, and usage of any system that stores, proc ...
,
cost-effectiveness Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a form of economic analysis that compares the relative costs and outcomes (effects) of different courses of action. Cost-effectiveness analysis is distinct from cost–benefit analysis, which assigns a moneta ...
,
scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work. One definition for software systems specifies that this may be done by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that ...
,
anonymity Anonymity describes situations where the acting person's identity is unknown. Anonymity may be created unintentionally through the loss of identifying information due to the passage of time or a destructive event, or intentionally if a person cho ...
,
trustworthiness Trust is the belief that another person will do what is expected. It brings with it a willingness for one party (the trustor) to become vulnerable to another party (the trustee), on the presumption that the trustee will act in ways that benefit ...
, and
sustainability Sustainability is a social goal for people to co-exist on Earth over a long period of time. Definitions of this term are disputed and have varied with literature, context, and time. Sustainability usually has three dimensions (or pillars): env ...
. Electronic voting technology can include
punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...
s,
optical scan voting system An optical scan voting system is an Electronic voting, electronic voting system and uses an Optical reader, optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and Vote counting system, tally the results. History Marksense systems While mark sense tech ...
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 voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...
s and votes via telephones, private
computer network A computer network is a collection of communicating computers and other devices, such as printers and smart phones. In order to communicate, the computers and devices must be connected by wired media like copper cables, optical fibers, or b ...
s, or the Internet. The functions of electronic voting depend primarily on what the organizers intend to achieve. 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. Many countries have used electronic voting for at least some elections, including
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,
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,
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,
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,
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,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...
,
France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...
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Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
,
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,
Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...
,
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
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,
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,
Malaysia Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia. Featuring the Tanjung Piai, southernmost point of continental Eurasia, it is a federation, federal constitutional monarchy consisting of States and federal territories of Malaysia, 13 states and thre ...
, the
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,
Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...
, the
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,
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,
Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
,
Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...
, 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 Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
and the
United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
. , Brazil is the only country in which all elections are conducted through electronic voting.


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. (7 December 2016). How Electronic Voting Works: Pros and Cons vs. paper Voting. ''MUO''. Retrieved 10 June 2019 from https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-electronic-voting-works/


Concerns and improvements

In a 2004 article for
OpenDemocracy openDemocracy is an independent media platform and news website based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 2001, openDemocracy states that through reporting and analysis of social and political issues, they seek to "challenge power and encourage d ...
, security analyst
Bruce Schneier Bruce Schneier (; born January 15, 1963) is an American cryptographer, computer security professional, privacy specialist, and writer. Schneier is an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman ...
claimed that computer security experts at the time were "unanimous on what to do" about concerns regarding electronic voting. "DRE machines must have voter-verifiable paper audit trails," he said, and "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. Concerns regarding security lapses in aging voting machines came to a head shortly before and during the
2016 United States presidential election United States presidential election, Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 8, 2016. The Republican Party (United States), Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana Governor, Indiana governor Mike P ...
. Cases were reported at the time of machines making unpredictable, inconsistent errors. The expert consensus centered on three primary solutions: the openness of a system to public examination from outside experts, the creation of an authenticable paper record of votes cast, and a chain of custody for records. Several major reforms took place after the 2016 U.S. election, including the widespread adoption of voting machines that produce voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs). These paper records allow election officials to conduct audits and recounts, significantly enhancing transparency and security. Congress provided $380 million in funding through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2018 under the framework of the
Help America Vote Act The Help America Vote Act of 2002 ( Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)107–252 (text) (PDF)), or HAVA, is a United States federal law, which was authored by Christopher Dodd, and passed in the House 357-48 and 92–2 in the Senate and was ...
to replace old machines with more secure models with modern cybersecurity protections. By 2020, 93% of U.S. votes had a paper record, and only 0.5 percent of jurisdictions reported using electronic voting machines without paper audit trails. This reduced the risk of undetected cyber interference or machine malfunction by enabling verification through physical ballots. In collaboration with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other organizations, election officials also took steps to harden voting systems against potential cyberattacks. This included training election officials, sharing threat intelligence, and establishing secure systems for vote transmission and counting. In addition to concerns about
electoral fraud 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 o ...
and auditability, electronic voting has been criticized as unnecessary and expensive to introduce. While countries like India continue to use electronic voting, several countries have cancelled e-voting systems or decided against a large-scale rollout, notably the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
, Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom due to issues in reliability or transparency of EVMs. Moreover, people without internet 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. 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.


New South Wales 2021 iVote failures

During the 2021 NSW Local Government Elections the online voting system "iVote" had technical issues that caused some access problems for some voters. Analysis done of these failures indicated a significant chance of the outages having impacted on the electoral results for the final positions. In the Kempsey ward, where the margin between the last elected and first non-elected candidates was only 69 votes, the electoral commission determined that the outage caused a 60% chance that the wrong final candidate was elected. Singleton had a 40% chance of having elected the wrong councillor, Shellharbour was a 7% chance and two other races were impacted by a sub-1% chance of having elected the wrong candidate. The NSW Supreme Court ordered the elections in Kempsey, Singleton and Shellharbour Ward A to be re-run. In the 2022 Kempsey re-vote the highest placed non-elected candidate from 2021, Dean Saul, was instead one of the first councillors elected. This failure caused the NSW Government to suspend the iVote system from use in the
2023 New South Wales state election The 2023 New South Wales state election was held on 25 March 2023 to elect the 58th Parliament of New South Wales, including all 93 seats in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Legislative Assembly and 21 of the 42 seats in the New South ...
.


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 stiff paper-based medium used to store digital information via the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Developed over the 18th to 20th centuries, punched cards were widel ...
systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the US 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, electronic voting system and uses an Optical reader, optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and Vote counting system, tally the results. History Marksense systems While mark sense tech ...
s allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot. DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil and
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, and also on a large scale in
Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...
and the United States. They have been used on a large scale in the
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
but have been decommissioned after public concerns. In Brazil, the use of DRE voting machines has been associated with a decrease in 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 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 a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...
system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot marking device can incorporate different forms of
assistive technology Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for Disability, people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, ...
. In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the 'Dechert Design', a General Public License
open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...
paper ballot printing system with open source bar codes 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 voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...
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 a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...
); 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 ( Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)107–252 (text) (PDF)), or HAVA, is a United States federal law, which was authored by Christopher Dodd, and passed in the House 357-48 and 92–2 in the Senate and was ...
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 (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 (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). Both systems are identical, and are developed to the specifications of
Election Commission of India The Election Commission of India (ECI) is a constitutional body established by Constitution of India, the Constitution of the Republic of India empowered to conduct free and fair elections in the Republic of India. It is headed by a Chief Ele ...
. 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 (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 and membership organization elections and referendums in
Estonia Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and to the east by Ru ...
, 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. These processes typically begin ...
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 less-wealthy voters—who tend to have less access to and familiarity with the Internet—may suffer in the elections due to e-voting, which tends to increase participation among wealthier voters. It is unsure as to whether narrowing the
digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...
would promote equal voting opportunities for people across various social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. 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 the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...
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 The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...
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 union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
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.


Sybil attacks

One of the biggest weaknesses of online voting is the difficulty of dealing with fake identities, especially when voting is implemented using software without the cooperation of some kind of government agency. These attacks use sybils—fake or duplicate identities—to influence community decisions. Since a single vote has the potential to tilt a group decision, prevention of sybil attacks is an important priority in ensuring the security of voting. Sybil attacks are a common issue with implementations on open, peer-to-peer networks, as the system must have a way to prevent fake identities to prevent gaming of the vote. Some future possible avenues of inquiries include to investigate more intersectional proof of personhood systems that aren't directly blockchain-based. For example, extending the web of trust by having a protocol that verifies proof of identities using social interactions would allow a community of users to assign corresponding levels of trusts to different candidates in relation with others. However, this would require a fully decentralized system. This web-of-trust protocol could even expand to allowing candidates to provide proof of personhood by physical attendance, which could lead to trusted clusters that grow into communities.


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 Assistive technology (AT) is a term for assistive, adaptive, and rehabilitative devices for Disability, people with disabilities and the elderly. Disabled people often have difficulty performing activities of daily living (ADLs) independently, ...
to print a voter verified paper audit trail, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation. Hybrid voting often includes both e-voting and mail-in paper ballots. 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 university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...
estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in the 2004 US 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 The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services for the United States Congress. It is the s ...
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 Computer memory stores information, such as data and programs, for immediate use in the computer. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the terms ''RAM,'' ''main memory,'' or ''primary storage.'' Archaic synonyms for main memory include ...
. 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), 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 a County (United States), county located in the U.S. state of Washington (state), Washington. The population was 2,269,675 in the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the List of counties in Washington, most populo ...
's demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese (Mandarin?). 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 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 law, fraud is intent (law), intentional deception to deprive a victim of a legal right or to gain from a victim unlawfully or unfairly. Fraud can violate Civil law (common law), civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrato ...
". In 2009, the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany The Federal Constitutional Court ( ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme court, supreme constitutional court for the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Basic Law ...
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 ...
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 Outline of p ...
(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 (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 Official, government officials at the Federal government of the United States, federal, State governments of the United States, state, and Local government in the United States, local levels. At the ...
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 use cryptographic techniques to provide voters with receipts that allow them to ...
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 Punchscan is an optical scan vote counting system invented by cryptographer David Chaum. Punchscan is designed to offer integrity, privacy, and transparency. The system is voter-verifiable, provides an end-to-end (E2E) audit mechanism, and iss ...
, 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, D.C., Washington, and part of the Washington metropolitan area. Founded in 1883 and incorporated in 1890, Takoma Park, informally called "Azalea ...
used Scantegrity II 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 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 particul ...
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 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 (NGCB or SGCB), 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 th ...
.


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 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 particul ...
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 Argonne National Laboratory is a Federally funded research and development centers, federally funded research and development center in Lemont, Illinois, Lemont, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1946, the laboratory is owned by the United Sta ...
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 an Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and a Fellow at the Berkman ...
, have demanded that voting machine
source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...
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 comedie ...
, 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, 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 environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
candidate in a San Francisco Mayoral election forces a runoff 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 ''Hacking Democracy'' is a 2006 Emmy nominated documentary film broadcast on HBO and created by producer / directors Russell Michaels and Simon Ardizzone, with producer Robert Carrillo Cohen, and executive producers Sarah Teale, Sian Edwards & Ea ...
" is a 2006 documentary film shown on
HBO Home Box Office (HBO) is an American pay television service, which is the flagship property of namesake parent-subsidiary Home Box Office, Inc., itself a unit owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. The overall Home Box Office business unit is based a ...
. 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 election system in
Leon County, Florida Leon County () is a County (United States), county in the Florida Panhandle, Panhandle of the U.S. state of Florida. It was named after the Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population w ...
. The central conflict in the MMO video game
Infantry Infantry, or infantryman are a type of soldier who specialize in ground combat, typically fighting dismounted. Historically the term was used to describe foot soldiers, i.e. those who march and fight on foot. In modern usage, the term broadl ...
resulted from the global institution of
direct democracy Direct democracy or pure democracy is a form of democracy in which the Election#Electorate, electorate directly decides on policy initiatives, without legislator, elected representatives as proxies, as opposed to the representative democracy m ...
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 E-democracy (a blend of the terms Electronic publishing, electronic and democracy), also known as digital democracy or Internet democracy, uses information and communication technology (ICT) in politics, political and governance processes. The ...
*
Electoral fraud 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 o ...
* Electronic referendum *
Soft error In electronics and computing, a soft error is a type of error where a signal or datum is wrong. Errors may be caused by a defect, usually understood either to be a mistake in design or construction, or a broken component. A soft error is also a ...
* 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 (India) *
Dominion Voting Systems Dominion Voting Systems Corporation is a North American company that produces and sells electronic voting hardware and software, including voting machines and tabulators, in Canada and the United States. The company's headquarters are in Toro ...
(Canada) * Electronics Corporation of India Ltd * ES&S (United States) * Hart InterCivic (United States) * Nedap (
Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
) * Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) (United States) * Safevote * Sequoia Voting Systems (United States) * Scytl (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 Punchscan is an optical scan vote counting system invented by cryptographer David Chaum. Punchscan is designed to offer integrity, privacy, and transparency. The system is voter-verifiable, provides an end-to-end (E2E) audit mechanism, and iss ...


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 Outline of p ...
Help America Vote Act The Help America Vote Act of 2002 ( Pub. L.Tooltip Public Law (United States)107–252 (text) (PDF)), or HAVA, is a United States federal law, which was authored by Christopher Dodd, and passed in the House 357-48 and 92–2 in the Senate and was ...
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 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