Postal voting is voting in an election where ballot papers are distributed to electors (and typically returned) by post, in contrast to electors voting in person at a polling station or electronically via an electronic voting system.
In an election, postal votes may be available on demand or
limited to individuals meeting certain criteria, such as a proven
inability to travel to a designated polling place. Most electors are
required to apply for a postal vote, although some may receive one by
default. In some elections postal voting is the only voting method
allowed and is referred to as all-postal voting. With the exception of those elections, postal votes constitute a form of early voting and may be considered an absentee ballot.
Typically, postal votes must be mailed back before the scheduled election day. However, in some jurisdictions return methods may allow for dropping off the ballot in person via secure drop boxes
or at voting centers. Postal votes may be processed by hand or scanned
and counted electronically. The history of postal voting dates back to
the 19th century, and modern-day procedures and availability vary by
jurisdiction. Research, focused on the United States and using data from
states where postal voting is widely available—California, Oregon and
Washington—shows that the availability of postal voting tends to
increase voter turnout.
Electoral laws typically stipulate a series of checks to protect against voter fraud and allow for the integrity and secrecy of the submitted ballot to be maintained. Known instances of fraud are very rare.
Coordinated, large-scale fraud by postal voting is likely hard to pull
off undetected because the large number of interested parties (such as
officials, political operators, and journalists) as well as a large
number of scholars and analysts who are capable of detecting statistical
outliers in vote totals signifying large-scale fraud. Officials can confirm instances of fraud by checking signatures and conducting basic detective work.
All-postal voting
All-postal
voting is a form of postal voting in which all electors receive their
ballot papers through the post, not just those who requested an absentee
ballot. Depending on the country, electors may have to return their
ballot papers by post or they may be allowed to deliver them by hand to
specified drop-off locations. All-postal voting is used in several states in the United States and in Switzerland, and was used in 2016 in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey as well as in four regions of the United Kingdom in the 2004 European Parliament election.
There is some evidence that all-postal voting leads to higher
turnout than in-person voting or mail-in voting that requires voters to
first request a ballot (rather than receive it automatically).
Postal voting in Australia was introduced for federal elections in 1902, and first used at the 1903 election. It was abolished by the Fisher government in 1910, following claims that it was open to abuse and biased towards rural voters. The Cook government's bill to restore postal voting was one of the "triggers" for the double dissolution prior to the 1914 election. Postal voting was eventually restored by the Hughes government in 1918 and has not been challenged since, although the provisions and requirements have been amended on a number of occasions.
Prior to Federation in 1901, Western Australia introduced a form of postal voting in 1877 with strict eligibility criteria. South Australia introduced postal voting for seamen in 1890,
and a further act in 1896 gave postal votes to any elector who would be
more than 15 miles (24 km) from home on election day, as well as for
any woman unable to travel "by reason of her health". Victoria
passed a similar law in 1899, and the first federal postal voting
legislation was also modelled on the 1896 South Australian act.
Procedure
Postal voting at a federal level is governed by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and administered by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). Postal votes are available to those who will be absent from their electoral division through travel, or who those are unable to attend a polling booth due to illness, infirmity, "approaching childbirth", caring
responsibilities, reasonable fears for their safety, religious beliefs,
imprisonment, status as a silent elector, or employment reasons.
Eligible voters may make a postal vote application (PVA) prior to
each election, or apply for status as a "general postal voter" and
receive a postal ballot automatically. Postal voters receive their
ballot(s) and a prepaid envelope containing their name and address, as
well as a predetermined security question from the PVA. Voters are
required to sign the envelope and provide the correct answer to the
security question. They are also required to have a witness sign and
date the envelope.
As of 2016, postal votes were able to be received and entered into the
count up to 13 days after election day. Following the 2016 election, it
was observed that the strict scrutiny process afforded to postal votes
was a "significant contributor" to delays in declaring the results of
close elections.
Austria
Austria enabled postal voting in 2007 by amending Article 26 of the Constitution of Austria.
Electors request an electoral card that can be completed in person or
in private and sent via post. In the 2017 election, roughly 780,000
postal ballots were cast representing 15% of all ballots. In 2019, this number has increased to 1,070,000.
Canada
The ability to vote when in-person voting is not possible was first introduced with the federal Military Voters Act
in 1917, giving all Canadian soldiers and their spouses the right to
vote. Public servants became eligible in 1970. The right was further
extended to civilian support personnel on Canadian Forces bases in the
1977. In 1993, Bill C-114 extended the special ballot vote (Special
Voting Rules) by mail to all Canadian citizens.
Use of special voting rules, including mail voting, has grown
with each election. In the 42nd general election (2015), the number of
voters increased by 117 percent over the previous election to roughly
619,000. This number grew to roughly 660,000 in the 43rd election (2019) representing 3.6 percent of electors.
Finland
Finland
introduced vote by post in 2019 for eligible voters living permanently
abroad and eligible voters staying abroad at the time of the elections.
France
Postal
voting existed in France until 1975, when it was banned (except in very
limited circumstances) due to fears of voter fraud. The highly publicized use of widespread postal voting in the 2020 United States presidential election has reignited debate in France about the use of postal voting, but no consensus or concrete plans exist for reintroducing it.
Germany
Postal voting is common in Germany, with 47% of the electorate voting by post in the 2021 general election.
Absentee voting has existed in Germany since 1957, originally in order
to ensure that all German citizens, especially the old, sick, and
disabled, and citizens living abroad, have the opportunity to
participate in elections. At first, postal voters had to state why they
could not cast their vote in person on Election Day; but this
requirement was dropped in 2008, allowing everyone to use postal voting.
Like in many other countries, in more recent years voting by mail has
become increasingly popular among younger and non-disabled citizens
residing within the country; as such, various toolsArchived 2021-03-10 at the Wayback Machine are being developed to help citizens, both domestic and abroad, more easily apply for postal voting.
Greece
Prime MinisterKyriakos Mitsotakis announced that postal voting will be used in the European Parliament Elections on June 9,
2024. He also said that the adoption of this option in European
Parliament elections serves as a precursor to its implementation in
national elections, which will be held in 2027
Hungary
Hungarian citizens living abroad who do not have an official address in Hungary are allowed to vote by mail. They are only allowed to vote for party lists, but not for local representatives. In the last parliamentary election in 2018, 267,233 votes (4.6% of all votes) were submitted via mail. 48% of all valid postal votes were submitted from Romania.
India
Postal voting in India is done only through the Electronically Transmitted Postal Ballot Papers (ETPB) system of Election Commission of India,
where ballot papers are distributed to the registered eligible voters
and they return the votes by post. When the counting of votes commences,
these postal votes are counted first before the counting of votes from
the electronic voting machines
of all other voters. Only certain categories of people are eligible to
register as postal voters. People working in the union armed forces and
state police as well as their wives, and employees working for the Government of India who are officially posted abroad can register for the postal vote, these are also called service voters. Additionally, people in preventive detention, disabled and those above the age of 65 years old can use postal vote. Prisoners can not vote at all. Media persons too have been allowed to use the postal ballot to cast their vote. The Communist Party of India (Marxist)
has alleged that postal ballots "will adversely effect the
verifiability of a large number of voters, thus, transparency and
integrity of the process", and expressed concerns with "instances of
manipulation and malpractice" with postal ballots.
Eligible Indonesians living abroad are able to vote by mail in
national elections by registering at the Indonesian overseas election
commission in their country of residence. Beside presidential elections,
they are also able to vote in DPR elections. All overseas Indonesian voters are included in the Jakarta 2nd constituency, which also contains Central and South Jakarta.
Since 2001 Italian citizens living abroad have the right to vote by
mail in all referendums and national elections being held in Italy
(provided they had registered their residence abroad with their relevant
consulate).
Malaysia
In Malaysia, opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Anwar Ibrahim alleged that postal votes have been used by the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition in securing seats in certain constituencies. He also said that in one particular constituency (Setiawangsa), he claimed that his Parti Keadilan Rakyat had actually won during the 2008 elections, before 14,000 postal votes came in awarding the incumbent BN parliamentarian the seat with a majority of 8,000 votes.
In Malaysia, only teachers, military personnel, and policemen based
away from their constituencies are eligible to submit postal votes.
Mexico
Postal ballot paper for Mexico federal election 2012
In Mexico, since the 2006 federal elections, postal voting for people
living abroad has been permitted. A request can be made to the National Electoral Institute which then sends the ballots outside the country.
Postal voting is accepted for voters who are staying abroad and are
not close to a foreign station or other voting place. Voters can
request ballots to be sent to them. Voters are also allowed to write
their own ballots.
Mail-in ballots are an option for Overseas Filipinos in select countries only. The general practise for local and overseas absentee voting in Philippine elections requires that ballots be cast in person at select polling places, such as a consulate office.
In Spain,
for European, regional and municipal elections, voters who will be
absent from their town on election day or are ill or disabled, may
request a postal vote at a post office. The application must be
submitted personally or through a representative in case of illness or
disability certified by a medical certificate.
Swiss federal law allows postal voting in all federal elections and referendums, and all cantons
also allow it for cantonal ballot issues. All voters receive their
personal ballot by mail and may either cast it at a polling station or
mail it back. As of 2019, approximately 90% of Swiss voters cast ballots
using Remote Postal Voting.
Absentee voting in the United Kingdom is allowed by proxy or post (known as postal voting on demand) for any elector. Postal voting does not require a reason, apart from in Northern Ireland,
where postal voting is available only if it would be unreasonable to
expect a voter to go to a polling station on polling day as a result of
employment, disability or education restrictions. Postal voting is
common in the United Kingdom, 8.4 million postal votes were issued, 18%
of the UK electorate (18.2% England, 19.4% Scotland, 19.4% Wales and
1.9% N.Ireland) in the 2017 general election.
Proxy voting is allowed for people who will be away, working, or medically disabled, anyone eligible to vote in the election may be a proxy for close relatives and two unrelated people. The proxy voter for an elector can also be a postal voter, known as Postal Proxy voting.
If a person becomes unable to vote in person within 6 days of an
election, including up to 5pm on the polling day, they can apply for
another person to vote on their behalf as an emergency proxy.
Postal voting in the UK has been (allegedly)
subject to fraud, undue influence, theft and tampering, other forms of
voting have also been subject to fraud. The number of cases reported to
or by the Electoral Commission however is low.
"[T]hese concerns need to be balanced by the fact that it is entirely
legitimate for political parties to encourage electors to vote, be it in
person or by post".
In the United States, postal voting (commonly referred to as mail-in voting, vote-by-mail or vote from home) is a process in which a ballot
is mailed to the home of a registered voter, who fills it out and
returns it via postal mail or by dropping it off in-person at a voting
center or into a secure drop box. Deadlines are set under state law,
with some states requiring ballots be received by election day and
others allowing ballots to be received after election day so long as
they are postmarked by election day. Vote-by-mail is available in both Republican and Democratic states, with research showing that the availability of postal voting increases voter turnout. Five states—Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Utah and Washington—hold elections almost entirely by mail.
It has been argued that postal voting has a greater risk of fraud
than in-person voting, though there are few known instances of such
fraud.
Mail-in ballots pose other challenges, including signature verification, prompt delivery of ballots,
and issues that have led to evidence suggesting younger voters, as well
as voters from racial and ethnic minorities, are more likely to have
their vote-by-mail ballots rejected.
In the 2016 general election, approximately 33 million postal ballots were cast, about a quarter of all ballots cast. Some jurisdictions used only vote-by-mail and others used absentee voting by mail.
In April 2020, during lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic,
an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found that 58% of those polled
would favor nationwide election reform to allow everyone to vote by
mail. President Donald Trump has brought up doubts about the integrity of unsolicited mail-in voting in the 2020 election.
A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an
election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it
is increasingly more common to use electronic voting machines.
Traditionally, a voting machine has been defined by its mechanism, and
whether the system tallies votes at each voting location, or centrally.
Voting machines should not be confused with tabulating machines, which count votes done by paper ballot.
Voting machines differ in usability, security, cost, speed,
accuracy, and ability of the public to oversee elections. Machines may
be more or less accessible to voters with different disabilities.
Tallies are simplest in parliamentary systems
where just one choice is on the ballot, and these are often tallied
manually. In other political systems where many choices are on the same
ballot, tallies are often done by machines to give faster results.
Historical machines
In ancient Athens
(5th and 4th centuries BCE) voting was done by different colored
pebbles deposited in urns, and later by bronze markers created by the
state and officially stamped. This procedure served for elected
positions, jury procedures, and ostracisms.
The first use of paper ballots was in Rome in 139 BCE, and their first
use in the United States was in 1629 to select a pastor for the Salem
Church.
Mechanical voting
Balls
The first major proposal for the use of voting machines came from the Chartists in the United Kingdom in 1838. Among the radical reforms called for in The People's Charter were universal suffrage and voting by secret ballot.
This required major changes in the conduct of elections, and as
responsible reformers, the Chartists not only demanded reforms but
described how to accomplish them, publishing Schedule A, a description of how to run a polling place, and Schedule B, a description of a voting machine to be used in such a polling place.
The Chartist voting machine, attributed to Benjamin Jolly of 19 York Street in Bath,
allowed each voter to cast one vote in a single race. This matched the
requirements of a British parliamentary election. Each voter was to
cast his vote by dropping a brass ball into the appropriate hole in the
top of the machine by the candidate's name. Each voter could only vote
once because each voter was given just one brass ball. The ball
advanced a clockwork counter for the corresponding candidate as it
passed through the machine, and then fell out the front where it could
be given to the next voter.
Buttons
In 1875, Henry Spratt of Kent received a U.S. patent for a voting machine that presented the ballot as an array of push buttons, one per candidate. Spratt's machine was designed for a typical British election with a single plurality race on the ballot.
In 1881, Anthony Beranek of Chicago patented the first voting
machine appropriate for use in a general election in the United States.
Beranek's machine presented an array of push buttons to the voter,
with one row per office on the ballot, and one column per party.
Interlocks behind each row prevented voting for more than one candidate
per race, and an interlock with the door of the voting booth reset the
machine for the next voter as each voter left the booth.
Tokens
The psephograph was patented by Italian inventor Eugenio Boggiano in 1907.
It worked by dropping a metal token into one of several labeled slots.
The psephograph would automatically tally the total tokens deposited in
each slot. The psephograph was first used in a theatre in Rome, where it
was used to gauge audience reception to a play: "good", "bad", or
"indifferent".
Analog computers
Lenna
Winslow's 1910 voting machine was designed to offer all the questions
on the ballot to men and only some to women because women often had partial suffrage,
e.g. being allowed to vote on issues but not candidates. The machine
had two doors, one marked "Gents" and the other marked "Ladies". The
door used to enter the voting booth would activate a series of levers
and switches to display the full ballot for men and the partial ballot
for women.
Dials
By July 1936, IBM had mechanized voting and ballot tabulation for single transferable vote elections. Using a series of dials, the voter could record up to twenty ranked preferences to a punched card, one preference at a time. Write-in votes were permitted. The machine prevented a voter from spoiling
their ballot by skipping rankings and by giving the same ranking to
more than one candidate. A standard punched-card counting machine would
tabulate ballots at a rate of 400 per minute.
Lever machines were commonly used in the United States until the 1990s. In 1889, Jacob H. Myers of Rochester, New York, received a patent for a voting machine that was based on Beranek's 1881 push button machine. This machine saw its first use in Lockport, New York, in 1892.
In 1894, Sylvanus Davis added a straight-party lever and significantly
simplified the interlocking mechanism used to enforce the vote-for-one
rule in each race.
By 1899, Alfred Gillespie introduced several refinements. It was
Gillespie who replaced the heavy metal voting booth with a curtain that
was linked to the cast-vote lever, and Gillespie introduced the lever by
each candidate name that was turned to point to that name in order to
cast a vote for that candidate. Inside the machine, Gillespie worked
out how to make the machine programmable so that it could support races
in which voters were allowed to vote for, for example, 3 out of 5
candidates.
On December 14, 1900, the U.S. Standard Voting Machine Company
was formed, with Alfred Gillespie as one of its directors, to combine
the companies that held the Myers, Davis, and Gillespie patents. By the 1920s, this company (under various names) had a monopoly on voting machines, until, in 1936, Samuel and Ransom Shoup obtained a patent for a competing voting machine.
By 1934, about a sixth of all presidential ballots were being cast on
mechanical voting machines, essentially all made by the same
manufacturer.
Commonly, a voter enters the machine and pulls a lever to close
the curtain, thus unlocking the voting levers. The voter then makes his
or her selection from an array of small voting levers denoting the
appropriate candidates or measures. The machine is configured to prevent
overvotes by locking out other candidates when one candidate's lever is
turned down. When the voter is finished, a lever is pulled which opens
the curtain and increments the appropriate counters for each candidate
and measure. At the close of the election, the results are hand copied
by the precinct officer, although some machines could automatically
print the totals. New York was the last state to stop using these
machines, under court order, by the fall of 2009.
Punched card voting
The Votomatic vote recorder, a punched card voting machine originally developed in the mid-1960s.
Punched card
systems employ a card (or cards) and a small clipboard-sized device for
recording votes. Voters punch holes in the cards with a ballot marking device.
Typical ballot marking devices carry a ballot label that identifies
the candidates or issues associated with each punching position on the
card, although in some cases, the names and issues are printed directly
on the card. After voting, the voter may place the ballot in a ballot
box, or the ballot may be fed into a computer vote tabulating device at
the precinct.
The idea of voting by punching holes on paper or cards originated in the 1890s and inventors continued to explore this in the years that followed.
By the late 1890s John McTammany's
voting machine was used widely in several states. In this machine,
votes were recorded by punching holes in a roll of paper comparable to
those used in player pianos, and then tabulated after the polls closed using a pneumatic mechanism.
Punched-card voting was proposed occasionally in the mid-20th century,
but the first major success for punched-card voting came in 1965, with
Joseph P. Harris' development of the Votomatic punched-card system. This was based on IBM's Port-A-Punch technology. Harris licensed the Votomatic to IBM. William Rouverol built the prototype system.
The Votomatic system
was very successful and widely distributed. By the 1996 Presidential
election, some variation of the punched card system was used by 37.3% of
registered voters in the United States.
In an optical scan voting system,
or marksense, each voter's choices are marked on one or more pieces of
paper, which then go through a scanner. The scanner creates an
electronic image of each ballot, interprets it, creates a tally for each
candidate, and usually stores the image for later review.
The voter may mark the paper directly, usually in a specific
location for each candidate. Or the voter may select choices on an
electronic screen, which then prints the chosen names, and a bar code or
QR code summarizing all choices, on a sheet of paper to put in the
scanner.
Hundreds of errors in optical scan systems
have been found, from feeding ballots upside down, multiple ballots
pulled through at once in central counts, paper jams, broken, blocked or
overheated sensors which misinterpret some or many ballots, printing
which does not align with the programming, programming errors, and loss
of files. The cause of each programming error is rarely found, so it is not known how many were accidental or intentional.
In a DRE voting machine
system, a touch screen displays choices to the voter, who selects
choices, and can change their mind as often as needed, before casting
the vote. Staff initialize each voter once on the machine, to avoid
repeat voting. Voting data are recorded in memory components, and can be
copied out at the end of the election.
Some of these machines also print names of chosen candidates on paper for the voter to verify, though less than 40% verify. These names on paper are kept behind glass in the machine, and can be used for election audits and recounts if needed. The tally of the voting data is printed on the end of the paper tape. The paper tape is called a Voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT). The VVPATs can be tallied at 20–43 seconds of staff time per vote (not per ballot).
For machines without VVPAT, there is no record of individual
votes to check. For machines with VVPAT, checking is more expensive than
with paper ballots, because on the flimsy thermal paper in a long
continuous roll, staff often lose their place, and the printout has each
change by each voter, not just their final decisions.
Problems have included public web access to the software, before
it is loaded into machines for each election, and programming errors
which increment different candidates than voters select. The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany found that with existing machines could not be allowed because they could not be monitored by the public.
Successful hacks have been demonstrated under laboratory conditions.
Location of tallying
Optical scans can be done either at the place of voting,"precinct", or in another location. DRE machines always tally at the precinct.
Precinct-count voting system
A
precinct-count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots at
the polling place. Precinct-count machines typically analyze ballots as
they are cast. This approach allows for voters to be notified of voting
errors such as overvotes and can prevent spoilt votes.
After the voter has a chance to correct any errors, the precinct-count
machine tallies that ballot. Vote totals are made public only after the
close of polling. DREs and precinct scanners have electronic storage of
the vote tallies and may transmit results to a central location over
public telecommunication networks.
A central count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots
from multiple precincts at a central location. Central count systems
are also commonly used to process absentee ballots.
Central counting can be done by hand, and in some jurisdictions,
central counting is done using the same type of voting machine deployed
at polling places, but since the introduction of the Votomatic
punched-card voting system and the Norden Electronic Vote Tallying
System in the 1960s, high speed ballot tabulators have been in
widespread use, particularly in large metropolitan jurisdictions.
Today, commodity high-speed scanners sometimes serve this purpose, but
special-purpose ballot scanners are also available that incorporate
sorting mechanisms to separate tallied ballots from those requiring
human interpretation.
Voted ballots are typically placed into secure ballot boxes
at the polling place. Stored ballots and/or Precinct Counts are
transported or transmitted to a central counting location. The system
produces a printed report of the vote count, and may produce a report
stored on electronic media suitable for broadcasting, or release on the
Internet.
Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots.
Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone electronic voting machines (also called EVM) or computers connected to the Internet (online voting). It may encompass a range of Internet
services, from basic transmission of tabulated results to full-function
online voting through common connectable household devices. The degree
of automation
may be limited to marking a paper ballot, or may be a comprehensive
system of vote input, vote recording, data encryption and transmission
to servers, and consolidation and tabulation of election results.
A worthy e-voting system must perform most of these tasks while
complying with a set of standards established by regulatory bodies, and
must also be capable to deal successfully with strong requirements
associated with security, accuracy, integrity, swiftness, privacy, auditability, accessibility, cost-effectiveness, scalability and ecological sustainability.
In general, two main types of e-voting can be identified:
e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of
governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic
voting machines located at polling stations);
remote e-voting via the Internet (also called i-voting) where the
voter submits his or her vote electronically to the election
authorities, from any location.
Electronic
voting technology intends to speed the counting of ballots, reduce the
cost of paying staff to count votes manually and can provide improved
accessibility for disabled voters. Also in the long term, expenses are
expected to decrease.
Results can be reported and published faster.
Voters save time and cost by being able to vote independently from their
location. This may increase overall voter turnout. The citizen groups
benefiting most from electronic elections are the ones living abroad,
citizens living in rural areas far away from polling stations and the
disabled with mobility impairments.
It has been demonstrated that as voting systems become more complex and include software, different methods of election fraud
become possible. Others also challenge the use of electronic voting
from a theoretical point of view, arguing that humans are not equipped
for verifying operations occurring within an electronic machine and that
because people cannot verify these operations, the operations cannot be
trusted. Furthermore, some computing experts have argued for the
broader notion that people cannot trust any programming they did not
author.
The use of electronic voting in elections remains a contentious
issue. Some countries such as Netherlands and Germany have stopped using
it after it was shown to be unreliable, while the Indian Election
commission recommends it. The involvement of numerous stakeholders
including companies that manufacture these machines as well as political
parties that stand to gain from rigging complicates this further.
Critics of electronic voting, including security analyst Bruce Schneier,
note that "computer security experts are unanimous on what to do (some
voting experts disagree, but it is the computer security experts who
need to be listened to; the problems here are with the computer, not
with the fact that the computer is being used in a voting
application)... DRE machines must have a voter-verifiable paper audit
trails... Software used on DRE machines must be open to public scrutiny"
to ensure the accuracy of the voting system. Verifiable ballots are
necessary because computers can and do malfunction, and because voting
machines can be compromised.
Many insecurities have been found in commercial voting machines, such as using a default administration password.
Cases have also been reported of machines making unpredictable,
inconsistent errors. Key issues with electronic voting are therefore the
openness of a system to public examination from outside experts, the
creation of an authenticatable paper record of votes cast and a chain of custody for records.
And, there is a risk that commercial voting machines results are
changed by the company providing the machine. There is no guarantee that
results are collected and reported accurately.
There has been contention, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could facilitate electoral fraud
and may not be fully auditable. In addition, electronic voting has been
criticised as unnecessary and expensive to introduce. While countries
like India
continue to use electronic voting, several countries have cancelled
e-voting systems or decided against a large-scale rollout, notably the Netherlands, Ireland, Germany and the United Kingdom due to issues in reliability of EVMs.
Moreover, people without internet access and/or the skills to use
it are excluded from the service. The so-called digital divide
describes the gap between those who have access to the internet and
those who do not. Depending on the country or even regions in a country
the gap differs. This concern is expected to become less important in
future since the number of internet users tends to increase.
The main psychological issue is trust. Voters fear that their
vote could be changed by a virus on their PC or during transmission to
governmental servers.
Expenses for the installation of an electronic voting system are
high. For some governments they may be too high so that they do not
invest. This aspect is even more important if it is not sure whether
electronic voting is a long-term solution.
New South Wales 2021 iVote failures
During
the 2021 NSW Local Government Elections the online voting system
"iVote" had technical issues that caused some access problems for some
voters. Analysis done of these failures indicated a significant chance
of the outages having impacted on the electoral results for the final
positions. In the Kempsey ward, where the margin between the last
elected and first non-elected candidates was only 69 votes, the
electoral commission determined that the outage caused a 60% chance that
the wrong final candidate was elected. Singleton had a 40% chance of
having elected the wrong councillor, Shellharbour was a 7% chance and
two other races were impacted by a sub-1% chance of having elected the
wrong candidate. The NSW Supreme Court ordered the elections in Kempsey,
Singleton and Shellharbour Ward A to be re-run. In the 2022 Kempsey
re-vote the highest placed non-elected candidate from 2021, Dean Saul,
was instead one of the first councillors elected. This failure caused the NSW Government to suspend the iVote system from use in the 2023 New South Wales state election.
Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the 1960s when punched card
systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the US where 7
counties switched to this method for the 1964 presidential election. The newer optical scan voting systems allow a computer to count a voter's mark on a ballot. DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil and India, and also on a large scale in Venezuela and the United States. They have been used on a large scale in the Netherlands but have been decommissioned after public concerns.
In Brazil, the use of DRE voting machines has been associated with a
decrease in error-ridden and uncounted votes, promoting a larger
enfranchisement of mainly less educated people in the electoral process,
shifting government spending toward public healthcare, particularly
beneficial to the poor.
These systems can include a ballot marking device or electronic ballot marker that allows voters to make their selections using an electronic input device, usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE. Systems including a ballot marking device can incorporate different forms of assistive technology. In 2004, Open Voting Consortium demonstrated the 'Dechert Design', a General Public Licenseopen source paper ballot printing system with open source bar codes on each ballot.
A direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machine records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter (typically buttons or a touchscreen); that processes data with computer software; and that records voting data and ballot images in memory components.
After the election it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored
in a removable memory component and as a printed copy. The system may
also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals
to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from
precincts at the central location. These systems use a precinct count
method that tabulates ballots at the polling place. They typically
tabulate ballots as they are cast and print the results after the close
of polling.
In 2002, in the United States, the Help America Vote Act
mandated that one handicapped accessible voting system be provided per
polling place, which most jurisdictions have chosen to satisfy with the
use of DRE voting machines, some switching entirely over to DRE. In
2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type
of direct recording electronic voting system, up from 7.7% in 1996.
In 2004, India adopted Electronic Voting Machines
(EVM) for its elections to its parliament with 380 million voters
casting their ballots using more than one million voting machines. The Indian EVMs are designed and developed by two government-owned defence equipment manufacturing units, Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL). Both systems are identical, and are developed to the specifications of Election Commission of India.
The system is a set of two devices running on 7.5 volt batteries. One
device, the voting Unit is used by the voter, and another device called
the control unit is operated by the electoral officer. Both units are
connected by a five-metre cable. The voting unit has a blue button for
each candidate. The unit can hold 16 candidates, but up to four units
can be chained, to accommodate 64 candidates. The control unit has three
buttons on the surface – one button to release a single vote, one
button to see the total number of votes cast till now, and one button to
close the election process. The result button is hidden and sealed. It
cannot be pressed unless the close button has already been pressed. A
controversy was raised when the voting machine malfunctioned which was
shown in Delhi assembly. On 9 April 2019, the Supreme Court ordered the ECI to increase voter-verified paper audit trail
(VVPAT) slips vote count to five randomly selected EVMs per assembly
constituency, which means ECI has to count VVPAT slips of 20,625 EVMs
before it certifies the final election results.
Public network DRE voting system
A
public network DRE voting system is an election system that uses
electronic ballots and transmits vote data from the polling place to
another location over a public network.
Vote data may be transmitted as individual ballots as they are cast,
periodically as batches of ballots throughout the election day, or as
one batch at the close of voting.
Public network DRE voting system can utilize either precinct count or
central count method. The central count method tabulates ballots from
multiple precincts at a central location.
Smartphones
are the mainstream for online voting used by the Japanese private
sector, but e-voting is not possible due to the law in public office
elections in Japan.
Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for
government and membership organization elections and referendums in Estonia, and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France. Internet voting has also been widely used in sub-national participatory budgeting processes, including in Brazil, France, United States, Portugal and Spain.
Security experts have found security problems in every attempt at online voting, including systems in Australia, Estonia, Switzerland, Russia, and the United States.
It has been argued political parties that have more support from
the less fortunate—who are unfamiliar with the Internet—may suffer in
the elections due to e-voting, which tends to increase voting in the
upper/middle class. It is unsure as to whether narrowing the digital
divide would promote equal voting opportunities for people across
various social, economic, and ethnic backgrounds. In the long run, this
is contingent not only on internet accessibility but also depends on
people's level of familiarity with the Internet.
The effects of internet voting on overall voter turnout are
unclear. A 2017 study of online voting in two Swiss cantons found that
it had no effect on turnout, and a 2009 study of Estonia's national election found similar results. To the contrary, however, the introduction of online voting in municipal elections in the Canadian province of Ontario resulted in an average increase in turnout of around 3.5 percentage points.
Similarly, a further study of the Swiss case found that while online
voting did not increase overall turnout, it did induce some occasional
voters to participate who would have abstained were online voting not an
option.
A paper on “remote electronic voting and turnout in the Estonian
2007 parliamentary elections” showed that rather than eliminating
inequalities, e-voting might have enhanced the digital divide
between higher and lower socioeconomic classes. People who lived
greater distances from polling areas voted at higher levels with this
service now available. The 2007 Estonian elections yielded a higher
voter turnout from those who lived in higher income regions and who
received formal education.
Still regarding the Estonian Internet voting system, it was proved to
be more cost-efficient than the rest of the voting systems offered in
2017 local elections.
Cost range per ballot (in euro) for the 2017 Local Elections
Voting system
Minimum
Maximum
Advance voting in county centres
5.48
5.92
Advance voting in ordinary polling stations
16.24
17.36
Early voting in county centres
5.83
6.30
Election day voting in county centres
4.97
5.58
Election day voting in ordinary polling stations
2.83
3.01
Internet voting
2.17
2.26
Electronic voting is perceived to be favored moreover by a certain
demographic, namely the younger generation such as Generation X and Y
voters. However, in recent elections about a quarter of e-votes were
cast by the older demographic, such as individuals over the age of 55.
Including this, about 20% of e-votes came from voters between the ages
of 45 and 54. This goes to show that e-voting is not supported
exclusively by the younger generations, but finding some popularity
amongst Gen X and Baby Boomers as well.
In terms of electoral results as well, the expectation that online
voting would favor younger candidates has not been borne out in the
data, with mayors in Ontario, Canada who were elected in online
elections actually being slightly older on average than those elected by
pencil and paper.
Online voting is widely used privately for shareholder votes,
and other private organizations.
The election management companies do not promise accuracy or privacy.
In fact one company uses an individual's past votes for research, and to target ads.
Corporations and organizations routinely use Internet voting to
elect officers and board members and for other proxy elections. Internet
voting systems have been used privately in many modern nations and
publicly in the United States, the UK,
Switzerland and Estonia. In Switzerland, where it is already an
established part of local referendums, voters get their passwords to
access the ballot through the postal service. Most voters in Estonia can
cast their vote in local and parliamentary elections, if they want to,
via the Internet, as most of those on the electoral roll have access to
an e-voting system, the largest run by any European Union
country. It has been made possible because most Estonians carry a
national identity card equipped with a computer-readable microchip and
it is these cards which they use to get access to the online ballot. All
a voter needs is a computer, an electronic card reader, their ID card
and its PIN, and they can vote from anywhere in the world. Estonian e-votes can only be cast during the days of advance voting. On election day itself people have to go to polling stations and fill in a paper ballot.
Hybrid systems
There
are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot marking
device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other assistive technology to print a voter verified paper audit trail, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation. Hybrid voting often includes both e-voting and mail-in paper ballots.
Internet voting can use remote locations (voting from any
Internet capable computer) or can use traditional polling locations with
voting booths consisting of Internet connected voting systems.
Analysis
ISG TopVoter, a machine designed specifically to be used by voters with disabilities
Electronic voting systems may offer advantages compared to other
voting techniques. An electronic voting system can be involved in any
one of a number of steps in the setup, distributing, voting, collecting,
and counting of ballots, and thus may or may not introduce advantages
into any of these steps. Potential disadvantages exist as well including
the potential for flaws or weakness in any electronic component.
Charles Stewart of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
estimates that 1 million more ballots were counted in the 2004 US
presidential election than in 2000 because electronic voting machines
detected votes that paper-based machines would have missed.
In May 2004 the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report titled "Electronic Voting Offers Opportunities and Presents Challenges",
analyzing both the benefits and concerns created by electronic voting. A
second report was released in September 2005 detailing some of the
concerns with electronic voting, and ongoing improvements, titled
"Federal Efforts to Improve Security and Reliability of Electronic
Voting Systems Are Under Way, but Key Activities Need to Be Completed".
Electronic ballots
Electronic voting systems may use electronic ballot to store votes in computer memory.
Systems which use them exclusively are called DRE voting systems. When
electronic ballots are used there is no risk of exhausting the supply of
ballots. Additionally, these electronic ballots remove the need for
printing of paper ballots, a significant cost.
When administering elections in which ballots are offered in multiple
languages (in some areas of the United States, public elections are
required by the National Voting Rights Act of 1965),
electronic ballots can be programmed to provide ballots in multiple
languages for a single machine. The advantage with respect to ballots
in different languages appears to be unique to electronic voting. For
example, King County, Washington's demographics require them under U.S. federal election law to provide ballot access in Chinese.
With any type of paper ballot, the county has to decide how many
Chinese-language ballots to print, how many to make available at each
polling place, etc. Any strategy that can assure that Chinese-language
ballots will be available at all polling places is certain, at the very
least, to result in a significant number of wasted ballots.
(The situation with lever machines would be even worse than with paper:
the only apparent way to reliably meet the need would be to set up a
Chinese-language lever machine at each polling place, few of which would
be used at all.)
Critics argue
the need for extra ballots in any language can be mitigated by
providing a process to print ballots at voting locations. They argue
further, the cost of software validation, compiler trust validation,
installation validation, delivery validation and validation of other
steps related to electronic voting is complex and expensive, thus
electronic ballots are not guaranteed to be less costly than printed
ballots.
Accessibility
A Hart eSlate DRE voting machine with jelly buttons for people with manual dexterity disabilities
Electronic voting machines can be made fully accessible for persons
with disabilities. Punched card and optical scan machines are not fully
accessible for the blind or visually impaired, and lever machines can be
difficult for voters with limited mobility and strength. Electronic machines can use headphones, sip and puff, foot pedals, joy sticks and other adaptive technology to provide the necessary accessibility.
Organizations such as the Verified Voting Foundation have criticized the accessibility of electronic voting machines and advocate alternatives. Some disabled voters (including the visually impaired) could use a tactile ballot,
a ballot system using physical markers to indicate where a mark should
be made, to vote a secret paper ballot. These ballots can be designed
identically to those used by other voters. However, other disabled voters (including voters with dexterity disabilities) could be unable to use these ballots.
Cryptographic verification
The
concept of election verifiability through cryptographic solutions has
emerged in the academic literature to introduce transparency and trust
in electronic voting systems.
It allows voters and election observers to verify that votes have been
recorded, tallied and declared correctly, in a manner independent from
the hardware and software running the election. Three aspects of
verifiability are considered:
individual, universal, and eligibility. Individual verifiability allows
a voter to check that her own vote is included in the election outcome,
universal verifiability allows voters or election observers to check
that the election outcome corresponds to the votes cast, and eligibility
verifiability allows voters and observers to check that each vote in
the election outcome was cast by a uniquely registered voter.
Voter intent
Electronic voting machines are able to provide immediate feedback to the voter detecting such possible problems as undervoting and overvoting which may result in a spoiled ballot. This immediate feedback can be helpful in successfully determining voter intent.
Transparency
It has been alleged by groups such as the UK-based Open Rights Group
that a lack of testing, inadequate audit procedures, and insufficient
attention given to system or process design with electronic voting
leaves "elections open to error and fraud".
In 2009, the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany
found that when using voting machines the "verification of the result
must be possible by the citizen reliably and without any specialist
knowledge of the subject." The DRE
Nedap-computers used till then did not fulfill that requirement. The
decision did not ban electronic voting as such, but requires all
essential steps in elections to be subject to public examinability.
In 2013, researchers from Europe proposed that the electronic voting systems should be coercion evident.
There should be a public evidence of the amount of coercion that took
place in a particular elections. An internet voting system called "Caveat Coercitor" shows how coercion evidence in voting systems can be achieved.
A fundamental challenge with any voting machine
is to produce evidence that the votes were recorded as cast and
tabulated as recorded. Election results produced by voting systems that
rely on voter-marked paper ballots can be verified with manual hand
counts (either valid sampling or full recounts). Paperless
ballot voting systems must support auditability in different ways. An
independently auditable system, sometimes called an Independent
Verification, can be used in recounts or audits. These systems can
include the ability for voters to verify how their votes were cast or
enable officials to verify that votes were tabulated correctly.
A discussion draft argued by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) states, "Simply put, the DRE architecture’s inability to provide
for independent audits of its electronic records makes it a poor choice
for an environment in which detecting errors and fraud is important."
The report does not represent the official position of NIST, and
misinterpretations of the report has led NIST to explain that "Some
statements in the report have been misinterpreted. The draft report
includes statements from election officials, voting system vendors,
computer scientists and other experts in the field about what is
potentially possible in terms of attacks on DREs. However, these
statements are not report conclusions."
A Diebold Election Systems, Inc. model AccuVote-TSx DRE voting machine with VVPAT attachment
Various technologies can be used to assure DRE voters that their
votes were cast correctly, and allow officials to detect possible fraud
or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the tabulated results.
Some systems include technologies such as cryptography (visual or
mathematical), paper (kept by the voter or verified and left with
election officials), audio verification, and dual recording or witness
systems (other than with paper).
Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, the creator of the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail
(VVPAT) concept (as described in her Ph.D. dissertation in October 2000
on the basic voter verifiable ballot system), proposes to answer the
auditability question by having the voting machine print a paper ballot
or other paper facsimile that can be visually verified by the voter
before being entered into a secure location. Subsequently, this is
sometimes referred to as the "Mercuri method." To be truly voter-verified,
the record itself must be verified by the voter and able to be done
without assistance, such as visually or audibly. If the voter must use a
bar-code scanner or other electronic device to verify, then the record
is not truly voter-verifiable, since it is actually the electronic
device that is verifying the record for the voter. VVPAT is the form of
Independent Verification most commonly found in elections in the United States and other countries such as Venezuela.
End-to-end auditable voting systems
can provide the voter with a receipt that can be taken home. This
receipt does not allow voters to prove to others how they voted, but it
does allow them to verify that the system detected their vote correctly.
End-to-end (E2E) systems include Punchscan, ThreeBallot and Prêt à Voter. Scantegrity is an add-on that extends current optical scan voting systems with an E2E layer. The city of Takoma Park, Maryland used Scantegrity II for its November 2009 election.
Systems that allow the voter to prove how they voted are never
used in U.S. public elections, and are outlawed by most state
constitutions. The primary concerns with this solution are voter intimidation and vote selling.
An audit system can be used in measured random recounts to detect
possible malfunction or fraud. With the VVPAT method, the paper ballot
is often treated as the official ballot of record. In this scenario, the
ballot is primary and the electronic records are used only for an
initial count. In any subsequent recounts or challenges, the paper, not
the electronic ballot, would be used for tabulation. Whenever a paper
record serves as the legal ballot, that system will be subject to the
same benefits and concerns as any paper ballot system.
To successfully audit any voting machine, a strict chain of custody is required.
The solution was first demonstrated (New York City, March 2001)
and used (Sacramento, California 2002) by AVANTE International
Technology, Inc.. In 2004 Nevada was the first state to successfully
implement a DRE voting system that printed an electronic record. The
$9.3 million voting system provided by Sequoia Voting Systems included more than 2,600 AVC EDGE touchscreen DREs equipped with the VeriVote VVPAT component. The new systems, implemented under the direction of then Secretary of State Dean Heller
replaced largely punched card voting systems and were chosen after
feedback was solicited from the community through town hall meetings and
input solicited from the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
Inadequately secured hardware can be subject to physical tampering. Some critics, such as the group "Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet"
("We do not trust voting machines"), charge that, for instance, foreign
hardware could be inserted into the machine, or between the user and
the central mechanism of the machine itself, using a man in the middle attack technique, and thus even sealing DRE machines may not be sufficient protection.
This claim is countered by the position that review and testing
procedures can detect fraudulent code or hardware, if such things are
present, and that a thorough, verifiable chain of custody would prevent the insertion of such hardware or software. Security seals are commonly employed in an attempt to detect tampering, but testing by Argonne National Laboratory and others demonstrates that existing seals can usually be quickly defeated by a trained person using low-tech methods.
Software
Security experts, such as Bruce Schneier, have demanded that voting machine source code should be publicly available for inspection. Others have also suggested publishing voting machine software under a free software license as is done in Australia.
One method to detect errors with voting machines is parallel testing, which are conducted on the Election Day with randomly picked machines. The ACM
published a study showing that, to change the outcome of the 2000 U.S.
Presidential election, only 2 votes in each precinct would have needed
to be changed.
Cost
Cost of
having electronic machines receive the voter's choices, print a ballot
and scan the ballots to tally results is higher than the cost of
printing blank ballots, having voters mark them directly (with
machine-marking only when voters want it) and scanning ballots to tally
results, according to studies in Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.
Adoption worldwide
Electronic voting by country
varies and may include voting machines in polling places, centralized
tallying of paper ballots, and internet voting. Many countries use
centralized tallying. Some also use electronic voting machines in
polling places. Very few use internet voting. Several countries have
tried electronic approaches and stopped because of difficulties or
concerns about security and reliability.
Electronic voting requires capital spending every few years to
update equipment, as well as annual spending for maintenance, security,
and supplies. If it works well, its speed can be an advantage where many
contests are on each ballot. Hand-counting is more feasible in
parliamentary systems where each level of government is elected at
different times, and only one contest is on each ballot, for the
national or regional member of parliament, or for a local council
member.
Polling place electronic voting or Internet voting examples have taken place in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Estonia,France, Germany, India, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands ( Rijnland Internet Election System), Norway, Peru, Switzerland, the UK, Venezuela, Pakistan and the Philippines.
In popular culture
In the 2006 film Man of the Year starring Robin Williams,
the character played by Williams—a comedic host of political talk
show—wins the election for President of the United States when a
software error in the electronic voting machines produced by the
fictional manufacturer Delacroy causes votes to be tallied inaccurately.
In Runoff, a 2007 novel by Mark Coggins, a surprising showing by the Green Party candidate in a San Francisco Mayoral election forces a runoff
between him and the highly favored establishment candidate—a plot line
that closely parallels the actual results of the 2003 election. When the
private-eye protagonist of the book investigates at the behest of a
powerful Chinatown businesswoman, he determines that the outcome was
rigged by someone who defeated the security on the city's newly
installed e-voting system.
"Hacking Democracy" is a 2006 documentary film shown on HBO.
Filmed over three years, it documents American citizens investigating
anomalies and irregularities with electronic voting systems that
occurred during America's 2000 and 2004 elections, especially in Volusia County, Florida. The film investigates the flawed integrity of electronic voting machines, particularly those made by Diebold Election Systems and culminates in the hacking of a Diebold election system in Leon County, Florida.
The central conflict in the MMO video game Infantry resulted from the global institution of direct democracy
through the use of personal voting devices sometime in the 22nd century
AD. The practice gave rise to a 'voting class' of citizens composed
mostly of homemakers and retirees who tended to be at home all day.
Because they had the most free time to participate in voting, their
opinions ultimately came to dominate politics.
Ballot and other documents for postal voting for the 2015 Luxembourg constitutional referendum.jpg)
