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E-VOTING PAGES
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How do you feel about electronic voting? Read the comments we have received so far
Why your opinion is important In many countries e-voting technologies are being developed, and an intensive theoretical and normative debate is taking place about the pro’s and con’s of e-voting systems. We would like to investigate the opinions of the users and the developers of this type of technologies. Introducing new technology is always a complex undertaking, and has many different aspects. These aspects are partly technical, partly social, political, organisational, legal, and partly behavioural. This is also the case for electronic voting systems. Historically, social aspects and democratic values have only been partially considered in the systems design process, the main focus has been on technical and economic factors. Being a 'Social Informatics' website we are naturally especially interested in the social consequences of e-voting systems. But we want to hear your opinion about all sorts of e-voting issues. Are you in favour of electronic voting? Do you feel that electronic voting influences the articulation of political preferences and opinions by citizens? Do you think that e-voting will influence voting turnout, digital divide or privacy? Is e-voting secure and safe? Will it enhance public interest in the democratic process? The inclusion of a variety of views and interests may broaden the perspectives on possible trajectories of socio-technical change. The point of departure should not be that we are moving towards the e-society, based on e-business, e-commerce, and e-government, but that we have to evaluate critically in what direction we are moving, and what social choices can be made. In other words, listening to different opinions may help to avoid many of the pitfalls, obstacles, and misunderstandings normally found when introducing new technologies. We believe that frequent feedback by voters, politicians, researchers and designers can identify problems before they become disasters.
Send us your views: This forum is now closed. I am making a research regarding e-voting and
if it is workable. E-voting is something new, thus there are many
people who believe that is not secure. Nothing is totally secure, even
traditional voting methods. Real life experiments indicate that
e-voting is secure for small scale elections. The question that arises
is if UK is ready to use e-voting. Ekalak Bangkok argues that 89%
would like to use e-voting in the future. I read a paper about
e-voting written by Margarita Tzavella (MSc grad).Tzavella states that
"the major concern of UK citizens is if e-voting is a truly public
medium, since young people with advanced computer knowledge have an
advantage over others. Hence, a participation gap is creating between
the more and less advantaged sectors of society". Apart from these
social concerns, arguments about security and privacy were also
expressed. I do believe that UK needs more time before implementation
since citizens don't feel comfortable enough. There is always potential for irregularities
in any voting system. E-voting just opens up the chance for those
irregularities. I agree with Bruce that any Voting system can
never be perfect (as it was proven by arrow's theorem) - and also that
failures can happen everywhere - it is just the question to which
extent. Having said this, it is the task for information technology to
limit the possible fraud down to an as small as possible number of
votes at one time, optimally only down to one vote with the required
consent of the voter (one thing than can never be inhibited)... I certainly do believe that e-voting has an impact on "the rules of the game", so not only turnout or political preferences, but also our perceptions of what it means for the vote to be "safe" or "secure". It has less to do with the actual technology itself, however, and more with the specific uses it allows, and how it is introduced and perceived. Eleftheria, Greece The research on e-voting provides an
interesting example of how technology proves to be neither good, nor
bad nor neutral in a social context. I agree with Eleftheria that the
key to understanding these issues lies in the specific uses the
technologies allow, and how they are introduced and perceived in a
local and temporal context.
I believe e-voting can provide an attractive
supplement to existing voting systems. Inevitably it is an option
favouring the 'e-literate'. A major difficulty lies in persuading the
electorate of the legitimacy and controls of e-voting i.e. that it
cannot be 'fixed' by hackers or other external influences such as
double counting, false identity etc. Another problem is the
reliability of the technology itself - if the U.S. Presidential
election result can be decided on a 'hanging chad' how would a digital
recount be managed? Well, I have different views depending on
what you mean by e voting: E-voting is a good way to participate in
election for those people who are not at the place where their name
appear in voter's list.By e-Voting they can cast their variable vote.
So I think it is a very good way. Online-voting represents a future, in which
the persons ballot independent from the place. The voters become more
flexible and mobile, because they are not constrained by voting in the
own polling station. This possibly tends to result in a decrease of
the relevance of the constituencies. Particularly in countries like
Great Britain an Germany, in which the persons at the parliamentary
elections first vote a candidate of the constituency, online-voting
could lead to discussion about the signification of dividing the
country in constituencies. Thus it could be, that online-voting in the
future would influence the whole political system of a country. If electronic elections were held in a country like Saddam's IRAQ would it be possible for International Organizations (as UN, OCSE...) to check and certificate such electoral results? I'm sure nobody could honestly certify such results. So why should we presume that the above results could be certified if the elections were held in our countries? Because we are much more honest than any dictator around the world? Please let us be serious! In our countries somebody has certified ENRON's financial statements until the day of the final crash! Why should such people (and companies) become suddenly honest when the matter of their job is giving the power to rule a country (and most of the whole world, in the case of USA) ? I want to say that if we have a look at the problem of e-vote in its entirety we soon notice that it is not a technical problem, but a social one. The risks are so huge and the forces in the battle so powerful that we, the citizens, should pretend to vote in the only safe way which is paper ballot! Of course with paper ballot some few votes may go lost, but not any foreign country, not any terroristic group, not any economical or political power will ever be able to change the results of our elections! I think this is the real point and compared to it cryptography, VVPAT, codes, mathematical voting systems, and things related are all misleading technicalities! I run a website abut the risky relationship between democracy and e-vote: http://www.electronic-vote.org and I'll be glad to see you there! Thank you very much from Italy, Emanuele Lombardi, Italy. Organisation: Electronic Vote and Democracy
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