The big challenge for an e-voting system is to provide for full anonymity of the vote and at the same time ensure that only persons entitled to vote can actually cast a vote, that votes can be verified and that voting systems can be audited. With e-voting systems that do not necessitate an electronic voter identification (e.g. with DRE voting machines or kiosk voting, i.e. when the voting machine is only used to cast and/or count the ballots), the set up should be so as to ensure that at no point of the voting process, a link between the voter and the content of the ballot is established.
With remote Internet voting systems, an electronic identification is necessary. In order to guarantee the secrecy of the ballot, it is important that at the earliest possible point in the voting process the link between the voter and the content of the vote is cut. It must not be possible to link the vote and the voter. The e-voting procedure must be designed in a way that there is a strict limitation of the people who have access to the voter register and who have access to the e-voting system (preferably they are managed by different authorities). In the case of the so-called reversible voting specific technical solutions must be put into place. Reversible vote refers to a system where the voter may vote as many times as he/she wishes and only the last vote will be counted. Or, the voter may vote via the internet and then still have the option of going to a polling station to cast a traditional ballot. Then, the vote cast at the polling station would be counted.
