Secret suffrage in remote electronic voting systems

Abstract

Can the principle of secret suffrage be ensured when voters are offered the possibility to cast their votes using internet voting? With the steady introduction of different forms of remote electronic voting since 2000, it has become apparent that internet voting fails at providing the privacy guarantees offered by traditional paper-based voting systems. Against this assumption, the current proposal suggests reviewing the traditional configuration of the principle of vote secrecy. With this in mind, the proposal will: (1) assess current accepted standards on voters' anonymity for traditional and internet-based voting systems; (2) evaluate the core elements of lawful relaxations to the principle of secret suffrage, and especially those traditionally associated to different forms of remote voting, and assess whether they can be applied to internet voting; and (3) study how current technical developments in the field of elections (and more broadly, in the field of e-governance and e-democracy) may result in further relaxations of the principle of secret suffrage in the future. Overall, the goal of the proposal is to approach the principle of secret suffrage against the specificities of internet voting and, instead of evaluating electronic voting systems using traditional standards for voters' privacy and anonymity, evaluate how specific proposals aimed at ensuring voters' secrecy in internet voting comply with the very end that the principle of secret suffrage is aimed at protecting, namely: voters' freedom.