Various forms of e-voting do not require that the identification process takes place electronically. E.g. with DRE voting machines or kiosk voting, i.e. forms of e-voting that take place in a polling station or another area that is supervised by election officials, the voter identification process may remain the same as with traditional voting. The e-voting system would then only be used in order to cast and/or count the ballots. However, e-voting systems may include an electronic identification process. For remote Internet voting this is mandatory. With remote Internet voting, voters authenticate themselves with an electronic ID card. If such a system does not exist, they can authenticate themselves by using a combination of username, password and additional person information (e.g. date of birth). Without a physical token, voter authentication is less reliable.
A necessary precondition for the electronic identification is an electronic voter register. In the case of electronic voter identification, additional arrangements need to be in place in order to make sure that the voters identity may not be linked to the content of his/her vote. Specific technical and procedural security measures are needed in order to guarantee that these two sets of information cannot be linked at any time and under any circumstances (secrecy of the vote). It is important that these measures are reliable and that they can be clearly communicated and demonstrated to interested stakeholders.
