Bringing Confidence to Electronic Voting

Abstract

Electronic voting (whether it is remote or poll-site) has a lack of transparency that makes its use controversial. Currently there is a lively debate regarding the deployment of electronic voting systems, with people arguing whether trustworthiness is only achievable by means of the use of backup paper trails. We believe that paper trails are not strictly necessary. In our opinion, the lack of transparency of electronic voting systems can be overcome to a great extent by using adequate security measures (technological, physical and procedural). Such security measures would provide clarity to the process and avoid the need to rely on complex and/or networked systems and/or proprietary closed systems.