A very belated post: my article for The Melbourne Globalist, published late last year. Enjoy.
The recent Australian democratic elections have left many Australians wondering why, in an age where the Internet seems to dominate all other aspects of public and private life, we are still left paper-and-pencil voting. Victoria Landale reports.This year’s elections saw claims of “rigged” results and multiple incidents of human error. One-thousand misplaced votes made all the difference in the electorate of Indi, and the discovery of 750 votes tallied against the wrong pre-poll location mid-way through the vote count in Fairfax lead to conspiracy claims by Palmer United Party founder and wealthy Queensland businessman Clive Palmer.
It’s these kind of “human errors” that computer-based voting could eradicate according to Australian Electoral Commissioner Ed Killesteyn – but at what cost?
In an article published in The Age last month[1], Mr Killesteyn defended the integrity of the current paper-based voting system, saying that the same level of integrity would be harder to achieve using computer-based systems. “The notion that you could actually materially manipulate the result is, I think, quite implausible,” said Mr Killesteyn. “On the other hand, if you go to computer-based systems where everything is centralized, the risks start to increase that there could be significant manipulation of the results.”
And it is primarily these security concerns that have ensured the democratic domain has remained outside the Internet’s vast sphere of influence.
Opponents of an Internet-facilitated e-voting system argue that system security would be harder to guarantee, which could compromise the integrity of the democratic system and diminish public faith in government competence, as well as the democratic process, in a broader sense. Remote e-voting systems could open voters up to issues of identity theft, voter coercion, and manipulation of results by unauthorized third parties with vested interests.
The benefits of an e-voting system are just as numerous, however. An electronic system, and not necessarily one that relies upon the Internet, holds the potential to increase the efficiency, rapidity, accessibility, and convenience of the electoral system. Electronic voting systems boast rapid tabulation capabilities that could ensure the availability of election results within one hour of the close of the polls[2]. Furthermore, an e-voting system could allow voters who are unable to vote without assistance due to issues of age or disability to vote independently and secretly, which would be a significant improvement.
Far from being a distant device of the far-off future, e-voting has in fact been around in various forms since 2001. The 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly elections saw the ACT Electoral Commission piloting a closed-network electronic kiosk voting system, with significant success. Various forms of electronic voting have since been trialed throughout Australia in order to assist blind or low vision (BLV) voters and Defense personnel serving overseas. In 2011, the New South Wales Government implemented a system called ‘iVote’, which allowed BLV, and disabled or geographically remote citizens to vote remotely via private telephones or the Internet. Significantly, this is the first instance in which any state or territory government has allowed electors to vote in an “uncontrolled” environment, a far cry from the security and stringency proffered by the current paper-and-pencil polling places during an election.
This is one of the major arguments against ‘remote’ voting, as cited in a discussion paper published by the Electoral Council of Australia & New Zealand last month. Unlike current voting practices in which a voter travels to a polling place to cast their vote in a “controlled” and impartial environment, remote voting allows individuals to vote in an environment uncontrolled by election officials, increasing the risk that votes may be coerced or influenced by third parties. Hence, remote voting has the potential to compromise the integrity of the democratic process.
The paper further highlights the necessity of certain digital literacies if the implementation of e-voting were to proceed on a larger scale and to a wider demographic. As age increases, digital literacy decreases – a significant problem considering Australia’s ageing population. Furthermore, full-scale remote e-voting would require universal access to the Internet for all Australian citizens, and up-to-date interfaces.
And let us not forget the social context of public elections. Who doesn’t enjoy walking down to the local school or community centre, buying a Sprite and a snag fresh off the barbie, and having a yarn to your friends and neighbours in line whilst waiting to vote? Could there be anything more quintessentially Australian? Opponents of e-voting cite the election process as a public ritual, sustaining people’s sense of shared civic engagement, postulating that remote e-voting would inevitably diminish or demolish this sense of community engagement. Some critics even go so far as to argue that “e-voting pushes us towards political anomie”[3]
The paper notes that myths of widespread public demand for e-voting systems are largely unfounded, and that an e-voting system would only be implemented on a larger scale following general public petition for such a system, or in a situation where the alternative was no longer viable – for example, in the instance of a paper shortage. As a result, widespread e-voting systems may still be a way off, and, for now, pencil-and-paper systems look to be here to stay.
victorialandale 