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Guidelines

e-Voting systems

The regulations, practices and facilities for people with disabilities to vote in public elections vary from country to country. For further information see current international voting practices for disabled and elderly people. Many countries are considering the use of electronic voting in one form or another, see countries with e-voting projects.

The needs of people with disabilities should be considered from the outset when designing a new system of voting.

What is e-Voting?

E-voting is short for "electronic voting" and refers to both the electronic means of casting a vote and the electronic means of tabulating votes.

Voting systems such as punched cards and optical scan cards are tabulated using electronic means. There are a wide variety of set-ups for casting a vote electronically, ranging from:

Polling place / Supervised e-voting

Photograph of a touch screen DRE system.

These terms refer to systems where a voter casts their e-vote inside a polling station or a location supervised by electoral officials. Such systems include the DRE voting machines that record the vote electronically without the use of the Internet or other network. The interface of a DRE machine can be a selection of buttons, a touch screen or a scanner that scans the ballot paper. Some DRE systems also employ a card swipe or cartridge system that must be activated before a vote can be made. Votes are then stored on a memory card, compact disc or other memory device.

Remote e-voting

Remote e-voting occurs when a voter casts their vote outside a polling station i.e. in the home, office or on the street. This can be done over the Internet using a PC with an Internet-connection to cast the vote and send it to be stored in another remote computer. PDA's, telephones and mobile telephones can also be used to vote remotely.

Auditing of e-voting systems

Just as with manual voting systems, e-voting systems have to be able to be audited. It must be possible to examine the processes used to collect and count the votes and to recount the votes in order to confirm the accuracy of the results.

There are different mechanisms to audit an e-voting system:


Statistics



Problems encountered by disabled and elderly people using e-voting

Blind and Partially Sighted

Those people with low vision have difficulty accessing voting systems due to small print, or the inability to suffciently see the position of text blocks on the screen. For blind people, e-voting systems are often inaccessible due to the nature of the process requiring a sighted guide.

Hearing impaired

Voting via telephones may cause a problem for the hearing impaired if instructions are not clearly spoken, there is no listen again facility or there is no audio function on the telephone to adjust the speaker volume. People with speech impairments may also have difficulties in using telephones that require speech input and also with voting systems that only offer help through ringing a helpline.

Physically impaired

The environment in which the voting system is placed can cause problems for those people with physical impairments. Often the use of small controls, such as push buttons or touch screens, and insufficient reach or strength to use a voting machine will impede the physically impaired when casting a vote using electronic means.

Cognitively impaired

The election laws of most countries establish a criteria that limits the right to vote, by any means, for people with psychiatric impairments. For those people with learning impairments, understanding and following the voting process using a touch screen or DRE may seem daunting. Some cognitively impaired people may find it difficult to remember a PIN number used to authenticate the vote.

Photograph of an elderly lady using a touch screen DRE system.

Elderly

The elderly require e-voting systems to contain a combination of auditory, visual and cognitive features to be able to retain their independence in the practice of casting a vote.


Other problems encountered with e-voting

Flexibility and choice
Implementation of e-voting, especially through remote methods, should be based upon the principles of flexibility and choice, ensuring that voters are not restricted to one preferred method but can choose the method of voting that most suits their lifestyle and preferences.

Security
A major security risk is the unauthorised intervention of third parties in the e-voting process. In today's Information Technology climate there is no guarantee that a programme would not be manipulated to allow storage and printing of forms different from ones appearing on the screen.

Other security issues involve ensuring that all voters are allowed to cast their ballot and to ensure that once votes have been cast they are stored and counted correctly. The problem is not only one of making elections secure, it is also one of convincing voters that the system is secure.

Secrecy
Ensure the voter has the opportunity to cast the ballot in secrecy (i.e. without coercion).

Privacy
Voters expect their votes to be private and for no-one to know how they have cast their votes.

Multiple voting
In the context of remote e-voting, only entitled voters are allowed to cast a vote, requiring that every voter be authenticated (e.g. by using a Personal Identification Number (PIN), a Transaction Number (TAN) or a digital signature) and their right to vote verified.

In order to prevent multiple votes being cast or other misuse, a record must be made and checked in order to establish whether the voter has already cast a vote. However, there must be an electronic separation between the vote and the identification of the voter to maintain the secrecy and privacy of the vote.

Biometrics
In the future biometrics may be used to authenticate identity and can be used in place of PIN codes and passwords. Issues occur in populating a database with all the fingerprints (or retina scans etc.) and accurately associating them with the right personal information, such as address and voting ward. There are also privacy issues. The most likely solution to such issues would be to guarantee the database's use only for elections incurring huge costs and reduced utility.


Checklist for e-Voting


Recommendations

Traditional voting systems were developed to ensure that the principles of voting were met, namely, the freedom to vote, the secrecy of the vote, the non-modification of the intention of the vote and the lack of intimidation during the voting process. E-voting systems must be designed and operated to ensure the reliability and security of the voting operation.

Photograph of a someone putting a cross in a box on a voting form.

An e-voting system should therefore consider the following minimum requirements:

Polling stations

Voting forms

Photograph of a mobile e-voting device.

Voting machines

    Controls

    Screens

    Audio output

    Peripheral devices

Documentation

Digital TVs

Telephones

SMS text messages

PCs / Internet

Authentication




Legislation


Further information


Acknowledgements

The information contained in this section was taken from the following sources:

The author would like to thank W. Quesenbery for her additional comments and ideas.


Picture acknowledgements

 

 

Last updated: 19.02.2008   © Copyright reserved