5 - Conclusion |
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5 CONCLUSION |
The legal implications of an online voting system have to be assessed on two regulatory levels: on the one hand the basic election principles which are laid down in several international treaties and national constitutions, on the other hand the national election regulations which describe the election process and organisation.
As to the first regulatory level, an online voting system has to comply with the following principles: non-discrimination, freedom and secrecy of the vote, one-person-one-vote, and security, reliability, verifiability and confidentiality of the voting system.
We believe that the (polling place or remote) CyberVote system can, if meeting certain criteria, comply with most of these basic requirements. However, a stringent application of the requirements of the vote to be free and secret and of one person to be able to vote only once, could object to the implementation of a remote online voting system. Indeed, with a remote online voting system, the secrecy and freedom (non-coercion) of the vote cannot be fully guaranteed. Neither can such a system guarantee that the voter who has been authenticated distantly is the one actually casting the vote.
The actual scope of these requirements will have to be discussed on a broader socio-political level: one will have to question if these requirements should not be interpreted less stringent, particularly in relation to the numerous benefits of an online voting system. In these debates, it should be considered that exceptions to these requirements do exist today (vote by proxy and vote by mail for instance) and that there seems to be a clear tendency to gradually extend the field of application of these exceptions.
On the second level, the existing national election regulations specifically describe the organisation of the elections and the voting procedures. Since the prescriptions correspond with and are limited to the election techniques used (paper ballots, polling stations, voting booths, electronic voting machines, vote by mail, vote by proxy, manual count, etc.), they cannot simply be applied to (polling place or remote) online voting procedures.
Mainly the following technical developments will require minor and/or major modifications of existing election regulations: electronic authentication (at the polling station or distantly), digital ballots, digital and online voter's registers, elimination of private voting booths (when remote online voting), online transfer of digital ballots and electronic monitoring of the election process.
