Vote, Uninterrupted

Electricity isn’t something that immediately comes to mind during elections. Yet beneath ballots, voting machines, candidates lies something less visible but equally essential: infrastructure. Electricity powers polling stations, keeps electronic systems running, supports communications, and helps transmit results. When that foundation fails, the election itself is tested.

South Africa offers a powerful reminder. For years, the country has dealt with recurring electricity shortages and rolling blackouts, known locally as load shedding. In 2024, reports of disruptions in voting and counting have made citizens edgy. While the problem has since been largely solved, the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) is leaving no stone unturned in ensuring  the highest readiness for the upcoming 2026 municipal elections.

The challenge extends far beyond South Africa. Power outages and infrastructure disruptions have affected elections in many places, and emergency guidance from election authorities in countries such as Canada and the United States treats major outages, floods, fires, and cyber incidents as realistic threats to voting operations. In other words, election resilience is not a niche concern; it is a basic requirement of modern administration.

The lesson is simple: elections should never depend on perfect conditions. Hospitals prepare for blackouts, data centers build redundancy, and aviation assumes systems can fail. Election management bodies should think the same way.  

Imagine every polling station asking one question during planning: what happens if the power fails at 11:30 in the morning? Can voting continue? Can voters still be identified? Can ballots still be issued? Can election records remain secure until communications are restored? If the answer to any of these is no, resilience has become a design problem, not just an operational one.

Fortunately, many solutions already exist. Battery backups can keep essential equipment running for hours. Solar-powered systems can support remote or off-grid locations. Emergency communications protocols can maintain contact when regular networks fail. Offline-first election software can keep operating without internet access and later synchronize securely when service returns.

Technology, however, is only part of the answer. The strongest contingency plans are often procedural. Poll workers should know how to switch to manual processes when systems fail. Clear chain-of-custody protocols should protect materials during outages. Redundant communications between field officials and election headquarters should already be in place. Most importantly, contingency plans should be tested under realistic conditions, not simply written down.

That these preparations rarely make headlines is precisely the point. The best contingency plan is the one voters never notice because the election continues almost seamlessly despite unexpected disruption.

As elections become more digital, resilience will matter more than ever. Citizens should never have to wonder whether they can vote because the lights went out.

Trump’s Venezuela Theory Revives a Core Contradiction of 2020

 

Photo: Donald Trump at Truth Social

 

Over the weekend, former President Donald Trump posted videos and statements promoting a claim that Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro was involved in fraud during the 2020 U.S. election, suggesting Venezuela helped tilt the outcome in favor of President Joe Biden. The claims surfaced amid renewed attention on Maduro following his capture and quickly circulated across social media.

Taken at face value, Trump’s assertions lead to a striking implication: if such fraud occurred, it would raise serious questions about the effectiveness of his own administration in safeguarding the U.S. electoral system.

In 2020, Trump was not an outsider challenging a system controlled by others. He was the sitting President of the United States, serving as commander in chief and overseeing the federal government, including intelligence agencies, the military, and entities responsible for protecting critical infrastructure. Election security fell squarely within that responsibility. If the system had been compromised at a national scale, the failure to prevent or detect it would rest largely with the administration in power.

Trump’s renewed focus on Venezuela deepens the contradiction. If Maduro, a leader who could not even sustain electoral manipulation in Venezuela without it being quickly exposed, were capable of covertly influencing a U.S. presidential election, it would suggest an extraordinary vulnerability in American election security that few experts consider plausible.

Some versions of these conspiracy theories go further, alleging that U.S. votes were transferred abroad for counting, including to countries such as Serbia. If true, such claims would point not just to interference, but to a breakdown in election oversight, cybersecurity, and interagency coordination at the federal level.

This framing leaves little middle ground. Either the claims are unfounded, or accepting them requires acknowledging a profound failure of governance under Trump’s presidency. It is difficult to reconcile allegations of massive, undetected interference with assertions of strong leadership and effective national security management.

Ultimately, Trump’s revived allegations resurface a contradiction that has followed his post-presidency narrative for years. The more expansive the alleged fraud, the greater the implied failure of the administration responsible for preventing it. In challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 election, Trump also invites renewed scrutiny of his own record in protecting the democratic institutions he once led.

The Vote Must Go On: Disaster-Proofing Elections

The report "Fostering Resilient Elections: Opportunities for Stronger Election Administration and Emergency Management Collaboration" (September 2025), published by the Center for Tech and Civic Life, is a timely and insightful contribution to one of democracy's most urgent challenges: how to keep elections running when calamity strikes.

Drawing from consultations with election officials and emergency managers across 24 U.S. states, the paper offers a grounded, nonpartisan roadmap for strengthening preparedness, coordination, and trust between two vital sectors that often meet for the first time—literally—“in the middle of a hurricane.”

The authors deserve high praise for addressing a clear and current concern, and for presenting a practical, systems-level approach to election resilience. They show that while emergency managers focus on life safety and infrastructure, and election administrators focus on access and integrity, both share a common mission: continuity under pressure.

The report’s step-by-step recommendations—from integrated planning and crisis communication protocols to joint tabletop exercises and continuity-of-operations plans—illustrate a mature understanding of how electoral systems must evolve in an age of compounding risk. The report also stands out for its clarity on the cultural and operational gap between the two professions.

As it notes, election officials operate under rigid legal deadlines that cannot be postponed even during natural disasters, while emergency managers are trained for flexible, all-hazards response. By encouraging year-round engagement, shared situational awareness, and a unified “language of resilience,” the paper helps bridge this divide with actionable realism rather than abstract theory.

The paper is a vital step toward institutionalizing the principle that the vote must go on—no matter the storm, the fire, or the flood. It reminds us that democratic continuity, like emergency management, depends on foresight, not reaction.

And now, the call to action is ours. Election administrators everywhere should read this report, pick up the phone, and reach out to their emergency management counterparts. Start the conversation, build the relationship, and plan together—even if the sky is clear today. Because the time to strengthen elections is not when the storm arrives, but long before it forms.

Biometrics for the Balkans: Albania’s Diaspora Voter Registration Could Inspire Stronger Regional Democracy

In 2025, Albania quietly achieved something many of its Balkan neighbors have long aspired to but never fully realized: it digitally enfranchised its diaspora. Through a secure, biometric-based electronic voter registration system, Albania enabled nearly a quarter of a million citizens living abroad to register to vote for the first time—a milestone rooted not only in political will but in rigorous technical design.

This achievement is documented in the paper “Empowering the Diaspora: A Digital Approach to Voter Registration for Albanian Citizens Out of the Country” by Elira Hoxha, Jona Josifi, and Redion Lila (University of Tirana, 2025), which was presented during the recent E-Vote-ID 2025. The study offers the first detailed analysis of how Albania transformed diaspora enfranchisement from an administrative aspiration into an operational reality, merging electoral reform, cybersecurity best practices, and human-centered design.

A Digital Bridge for One-Third of the Nation

One-third of Albania’s citizens live outside the country—most in Italy, Greece, and Germany—and for decades faced immense barriers to participation: complex paperwork, poor consular coordination, and inconsistent voter lists. As Hoxha, Josifi, and Lila note, the introduction of the electronic voter registration (e-registration) platform marked “a major milestone in Albania’s ongoing efforts to modernize its electoral infrastructure and expand civic participation beyond national borders.”

The Central Election Commission (CEC) developed the system to operate through three channels—a desktop web portal, a native mobile application, and a mobile-friendly web version—ensuring inclusivity across age groups, devices, and internet conditions. Statistical data from the study revealed that nearly 80 percent of registrants completed the process using mobile devices, underscoring what the authors describe as “the emergence of mobile-first democracy.”

Biometric Security Plus Inclusivity

What set Albania’s approach apart was the integration of cutting-edge biometric technology with responsive human oversight. The system employed a three-factor authentication process—password, one-time passcode (OTP), and real-time facial recognition verified against the National Civil Registry—anchored on ISO/IEC 19794-5 biometric standards. This multi-layered authentication, as detailed in the paper, “safeguarded the registration workflow against impersonation, unauthorized access, and automated attacks.”

At the same time, the CEC established a 24/7 multilingual support team accessible via phone, email, WhatsApp, and chatbot. Staff worked in rotating shifts until 2 a.m., verifying applications within an average of three days. If errors were found, applicants were allowed to correct and reapply—striking, as the authors emphasize, “the right balance between efficiency and empathy.”

A Model of Democratic Modernization

The results were transformative. According to Hoxha, Josifi, and Lila, a total of 245,935 diaspora voters successfully registered—an unprecedented expansion of Albania’s electorate. The system’s reliability, accessibility, and compliance with GDPR and national data laws demonstrated that technological modernization need not come at the expense of democratic integrity.

Beyond its technical success, the initiative carried profound symbolic weight: it restored a sense of belonging to citizens long excluded from the political life of their homeland. It showed that digital transformation, when paired with transparency and accountability, can rebuild trust in institutions—something sorely needed in many post-transition democracies.

Blueprint for the Balkans

Albania’s experience offers a pragmatic blueprint for other Balkan states such as North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia. Each faces similar challenges: large diasporas, administrative bottlenecks, and waning voter confidence. Yet as the paper demonstrates, these challenges are not immutable—they are design problems waiting for digital solutions.

A region-wide embrace of secure, biometric e-registration could yield multiple dividends: enhanced electoral integrity, expanded participation, and a tangible step toward consolidating democracy in Southeast Europe. As the authors conclude, Albania’s case illustrates that “leveraging technology to expand voter engagement is not merely a technical innovation—it is an act of democratic renewal.”

Albania’s model reminds the Balkans that inclusion is the ultimate test of democracy. And in 2025, through code, cloud, and commitment, Albania passed that test with distinction.