Getting the Vote Up to Code: Four Ideas for Raising Standards in Online Voting (Part II)

We have covered what recommendations and guidelines exist already in the world of online voting. But how can we make them even stronger? In this piece, we share some ideas which can help make secure, trustworthy online voting a reality for even more institutions and voters.?

Make Standards Possible

Of course standards are possible, that’s what this article is about, right? Well, yes and no: a working group of election and computer science experts which got together in 2022 to discuss forming standards for online voting in US elections stopped short of actually proposing any. As they put it, it is currently “infeasible …to draft responsible standards to support the use of internet ballot return in U.S. public elections at this time.”

So, did the lack of standards lead to the spread of unsecure online voting systems, or does the internet being complex make it hard to create usable standards in the first place? The answer can be both in this case, as experts agree that developing resilient and usable online voting systems for public elections is a large task but also encourage us to follow existing guidelines while continuing to develop more robust ones via trial and error.?

This leads to our second point…

More Local, Small-scale Testing of Technologies?

Voting online is, much like democracy itself, a learn-by-doing exercise. We could spend all day telling you about how online voting has so much potential to help improve democratic practices, but when push comes to shove actions speak louder than words, and widely-used standards for online voting systems can only become reality if systems are tested more in different contexts.?

We will never shy away from stating that all democratic elections are important, regardless of their size or scope, and letting as many democratic organizations as possible use online voting systems will help us develop stronger standards for all events.?

Insist on End-to-end Verifiability, and Nothing Less

The experts don’t mince words here: voting over the Internet using systems which are not end-to-end verifiable is not safe. Veterans of computer science and election administration alike point out that secure elections cannot take place over the internet without end-to-end verifiability (E2E-V), as it is a system property which allows all election processes from start to finish to be checked and verified.?

Don’t just take our word for it! Computer scientist Josh Benaloh and his colleagues perhaps said it best: “public elections should not be conducted over the Internet using systems that are not E2E-V.”

Create an International Online Voting Industry Association?

Sometimes a person has to put their foot down and say, “the buck stops here.” As we have spent time explaining before, the world is full of “black-box”-type online voting systems which are not open about how they operate and have the potential to undermine stakeholders’ trust in democratic processes. Bearing this in mind, in order to move towards ensuring secure and trustworthy online voting for as many citizens as possible, online voting system vendors themselves must step up and agree to minimum standards for their products.

We have suggested what can be done to move closer to uniform standards for online voting, but ultimately public and private entities must agree on some basic guidelines together, such as E2E-V, in order to make progress. For an in-depth look at what guidelines we have and what we need, check out our blog post here.

Written by Alexander Boylston, writer at Assembly Voting?