As the application of IT technology to the field of electoral administration rapidly evolves across the world, e-voting continues to remain a hotly debated issue, particularly when it comes to ascertain aspects of verifiability, accountability and sustainability of new systems, voting machines and technologies that are constantly developed and adopted worldwide.

While there seems to be an overall agreement among election practitioners on fundamental pre-requisites for e-voting systems (such as the fact that such systems must be secure, reliable, efficient, technically robust, open to independent verification and easily accessible to voters so that they can build public confidence in the administration of the electoral process), yet, the global community of election practitioners appears to be divided between:

• those - still being aware of the various challenges that e-voting systems entail - who actively advocate for the introduction of e-voting systems worldwide as a means to modernize the administration of the electoral process and to make the voting and counting operations faster, more efficient and reliable; and
• those – still accepting the inevitability of technological development in election administration, approaching e-voting more cautiously, sceptical about the lack of transparency and verifiability of e-voting systems, about possible breaches to the secrecy of the vote and about possible manipulation of the election results -  who prioritise issues of sustainability, local ownership and appropriateness to the local environments in which e-voting has to be introduced, developed, run and maintained.

Question(s) of the month:

• What is the way forward for e-voting?
• Which side are you with, and why?
• Is it possible to forge a common ground between these two schools of thought?