The topic of voting over the Internet has
been discussed at length on this site. It is absolutely true that more and more
people are turning to the Internet for so many more of their daily activities.
It is over the Internet that we are able to communicate with one another, just
as we are able to complete our online banking, submit our taxes and conduct our
business. Why is it that choosing our government officials and allowing our
voices to be heard on public matters cannot be accomplished in the same way?
Indeed, the people of Lithuania have cried
out for this natural evolution of the democratic process and now their demands
are finally being heard. The Lithuanian government has
officially approved an initiative wherein online voting could be
implemented in time for the country's 2016 parliamentary elections. The
proposal was put forth by two ministers from the social-democratic cabinet.
And while this represents a major step
forward in modernizing and updating the democratic process in Lithuania to
bring it up to speed with the increasingly digital and interconnected age of
the Internet, the establishment and deployment of e-voting protocols still has
a long way to go. The initiative simply provides for further discussion in
parliament about the institution of online voting for Lithuanian citizens in
general elections. The actual institution of such a system has not yet been
approved.
The people of Lithuania have been urging
the government to move forward with Internet-based voting systems for quite
some time. Indeed, the World Lithuanian Community and the commission of the
Lithuanian parliament passed
a resolution back in 2010 to suggest such a move, but discussions continue
to this day with no firm decision to include e-voting and i-voting paradigms to
the country's democratic process.
The Lithuanian government should take to
heart at least two key sources of experience and expertise on the matter.
First, the Internet-based
voting system of Estonia has long since been viewed as one of the best in
the world. Lithuania would be advised to look to Estonia as a model for how
i-voting can be well implemented with a high degree of security, great voter
verification, and improved voter turnout numbers. No credible hacking or fraud
accusations have been made to date and the advanced identification systems used
in Estonia work to prevent voter fraud or vote tampering.
Second, one of the significant motivating
factors for implementing Internet-based voting for Lithuania is to better
accommodate Lithuanian citizens living and working abroad who would still like
to exercise their suffrage right. It places a significant burden on such
individuals, particularly from a financial standpoint, to have to return to
Lithuania in order to vote. In India, remote e-voting has
been mandated for non-resident Indians for this exact reason.
Internet voting should never replace
traditional voting in a physical polling place supervised by election officials
and vetted volunteers. Citizens should always have the right to cast their
ballot in person, ideally through a direct-recording electronic voting machine
with a voter-verifiable paper trail and a robust audit system throughout the
democratic process. Instead, Internet voter should be offered as an option for
citizens wishing to utilize it and it can serve as a very suitable alternative
to postal voting, particularly for absentee ballots.
Some sixty-five percent of those polled in
Lithuania support the implementation of online voting. As Lithuania moves
toward its elections in October 2016, the hope is the parliamentary discussions
can move quickly enough to have such a system in place in time.
