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When discussing the technology involved in
running an election, most conversations turn to voting machines, for example,
or they may talk about the infrastructure involved in recording, tallying and
transmitting the ballots as part of an election. By large, the vast majority of
ballots cast in an election are done in person in some form or another, but it
is just as important to consider the voting rights of citizens who are unable
to make a physical appearance at an official polling place on Election Day. And
this was a hot topic issue leading up to the presidential elections in Slovakia
earlier this year.
After no candidate was able to secure a
majority in the first round of voting on March 15, a second round of voting was
conducted on March 29 in which Andrej Kiska defeated Robert Fico with 59.38% of
the popular vote. Part of the problem with this election was that it
effectively did
not allow for true remote voting. The current Slovak law says that citizens
without permanent residence in the country can vote, but they must be present
on Election Day. There is no support for remote voting, since this cohort
“still isn't numerous enough to make it worthwhile investing such an amount of
money”, according to Slovakia's Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák.
To demonstrate the interest and desire of
the Slovakian people in Internet voting and support for remote voting for those
living abroad, a civic association of Slovaks living abroad has put together a
petition. As it stands, expatriate Slovaks can vote via the postal service, but
having an Internet-based system could make it easier for voters to engage and
participate. The petition seeks to get at least 50,000 signatures before being
delivered to the Slovak parliament.
The two
main reasons cited by Kaliňák as to why Internet voting is not yet viable
in Slovakia are related to cost and security risks. These are issues that have
also been raised in other countries around the world, but they have also been
suitably addressed by voting experts like William
J. Kelleher, Ph.D. He says that most hacking jobs “are the result of human
insiders abusing their positions” and not the fault of the voting technology
itself.
Indeed, recent expansions in remote voting
technology have already been successfully
demonstrated in Australia and the Philippines. However, if the petition is
able to get the 50,000 signatures it desires, this would provide a clear
illustration to the Slovak government that a large contingent of the Slovak
people, particularly those living and working abroad, are calling for an updated
electoral system where they are better able to cast a remote vote without
having to rely on a more archaic postal-based system.
The 2014 Slovak presidential elections have
come and gone, but the civil initiative of those Slovak expatriates still have
several months to get the signatures they need. The goal is to collect the
50,000 signatures in 12 months, which would give them a soft deadline of
January 2015.
