Balancing Security, Transparency, and Efficiency: The Belgian E-Voting Blueprint

The electronic voting system being used in Flanders is emerging as one of Europe’s enduring and most thoughtfully designed ventures in digital democracy. Over three election cycles, 2012, 2018, and 2024, Flanders has developed and refined an offline voting system that balances technological efficiency with the bedrock principles of security and transparency. The model proves digitalization, when properly governed, can strengthen public trust.

According to a paper presented by election technologist Jan Coudron at the recent E-Vote ID Conference in France, the system is built on the idea of verifiable paper trail, which anchors every digital ballot in a physical record.

After voters make their selection on the touchscreen, the machine prints a paper ballot showing both the readable choices and a QR code that encodes the same information. The voter can then visually confirm their vote before depositing the printout into a sealed ballot box. This ensures that each electronic vote has a tangible, auditable counterpart—bridging the gap between digital efficiency and paper-based trust.

History

Belgium’s foray into e-voting began in the early 1990s with the Digivote and Jites systems, which relied on magnetic cards. While these early efforts demonstrated technical potential, concerns about transparency, auditability, and long-term reliability soon surfaced.

In response, a 2007 study called BeVoting, authored by a consortium of seven Belgian universities—redefined the nation’s approach around three core principles: verifiability, security, and offline operation.

By 2012, Flanders rolled out the “enhanced paper voting” system, combining touchscreen convenience with a voter-verifiable paper trail. Over the next decade, the model steadily expanded. By 2024, it covered about 62% of Flemish voters across 159 municipalities—transforming what began as a limited pilot into a core feature of regional democracy.

Firm legal foundations

The Flemish model is grounded on a robust legal and institutional framework. Two decrees—the Local and Provincial Electoral Decree (2011) and the Digital Electoral Decree (2012)—establish strict rules for system design, data management, and verification procedures. Oversight is vested in an independent College of Experts appointed by the Flemish Parliament, complemented by certified evaluators who audit hardware and software integrity before and after each election.

The Flemish platform operates entirely offline. Votes are recorded locally, printed on paper, and stored both digitally and physically. Encrypted data copies are saved on multiple USB drives, while every stage—from system setup to result transmission—is sealed, hashed, and logged for verification. This “island architecture” drastically reduces cyberattack surfaces while maintaining the speed and reliability expected from digital processes.

Early learnings

The 2012 rollout surfaced several lessons: compressed preparation timelines, uneven staff training, and interface issues like accidental double taps. However, subsequent evaluations in 2018 and 2024 recorded marked improvement. Manuals were rewritten in clearer, visual formats; polling officers received better training; and the interface was redesigned for clarity and accessibility. By 2024, 94% of municipal coordinators reported satisfaction with the system, praising its stability, accuracy, and ease of use.

Tangible improvements

Electronic voting has transformed election logistics in Flanders. Where manual counting once consumed days, complete municipal results now arrive within hours. In the 2024 elections, polls closed at 3 p.m., and full results were ready by 7 p.m. The system also reduced manpower requirements by an estimated 10,000 staff compared with manual counting. Yet the emphasis on transparency never diminished—each digital tally remains verifiable against its corresponding paper ballot, ensuring that efficiency does not come at the cost of trust.

Ensuring long-term gains

With the current equipment contracts expiring in 2027, Flanders now faces critical policy decisions: whether to upgrade, extend, or transition to new platforms. Considerations include system cost, accessibility for voters with disabilities, sustainability of hardware, and potential integration with national digital identity programs. Whatever direction policymakers choose, maintaining the delicate balance among security, transparency, and efficiency will remain the touchstone of the next phase.

Flanders’ offline e-voting model demonstrates that democratic innovation is not defined by speed or modernity alone—it is defined by verifiable trust. By keeping the process auditable, offline, and under independent oversight, Belgium has shown that technology can reinforce rather than compromise electoral integrity.

The Flemish experience stands as a measured, mature blueprint for resilient digital democracy.

Scytl’s 2014: Annus horribilis, or may be not

2014 was a peculiar year for the noisiest, albeit not the only Spanish company specialized in voting technology and solutions. Despite some major setbacks resulting from ill-developed voting solutions, it managed to close a $104 million financing round this year.

Image: Pixabay

The year had a bumpy start for Scytl. For Ecuador’s 2014 Sectional elections in February, Scytl was to deliver a solution that would help the Ecuadorian Election Commission to process the tallying of the votes with the goal that results could be announced within 72 hours after closing the polls. Yet, one whole month after the election was over, Scytl was still counting votes and was still unable to provide final results. In the mean time, Ecuadorian authorities were confronting the herculean task of convincing public opinion that the results would “soon be announced”- were legit. As a result of the scandal and ensuing public unrest, Domingo Paredes, head of the electoral management body, declared that the Election Commission had unilaterally terminated the contract, demanded payment of guarantees, and began taking legal actions against the company. Oddly enough, after the fanfare published in Scytl's website news in February and March about projects "in the works" as if the February election had been "a successful implementation", there has been a complete silence on Ecuador the following months.

A few months later (June) Norway —one of the countries leading the crusade to make internet voting a reality, and a client of the Barcelona-based company—, halted i-voting experiments amid security fears. As evidenced in the video posted by the Norway electoral authorities (2:31:13), the secrecy of 54% of the vote was in fact compromised during the September 2013 pilot due to a bug in the encryption key. These cryptography issues were also reported in the Expert Study Mission Report from the Carter Center.

Even though bad news are the ones usually travelling faster, neighboring Peru seems not to have found out about Ecuador’s ordeal with Scytl. And only five months after the infamous incident aforementioned, the National Office for Electoral Processes (ONPE) of Peru experienced first-hand the mishaps of a poorly designed in-site Internet voting solution. In August, while conducting an Internet voting pilot using Scytl technology, voters ran into all sorts of trouble to cast a ballot. In spite of the simplicity of the contest –only 186 polling centers serving 34,672 voters– the company was once more unable to deliver up to the expectations.  

To cap off the year, on October 27, Scytl ran into trouble once again— this time staged by its branch in Canada, while providing its internet voting platform for elections in 20 Ontario municipalities.

According to the company, five election files had been mislabeled due to human error, creating tabulations problems that delayed results. On November 6, the 20 municipalities got together to discuss the issues and demand explanations. Scytl apologised and offered a discount of 25% from the charges for their services, plus a 10% discount on a future project, as if Ontario's woes were of financial nature. Read more here.

In spite of all these incidents, Scytl managed to raise over 100 million dollars from capital investors. Among them: Vy Capital, Vulcan Capitan and Sapphire Ventures, formerly SAP Ventures – the independent venture capital firm associated to Europe’s largest software company.

Scytl’s PR department deserves a standing ovation for not allowing such a poor track of performances ruin a financing round; especially in the age of global communications and instant scandals when such blunders happen.

Is the Internet the future of voting?

Image: Virgin.com

Sir Richard Branson, the business magnate and investor who founded the Virgin Group, published on March 24 a post on his blog with the title -Is the internet the future of voting?

The inquiry served to bring to the surface the stark contrast between those in favor of I-voting, and those who consider the technology currently available is not ready to be implemented in government elections. In spite of the differences in positions, the post showed an overwhelming interest on what seems to be one of the next big things in the digital era. 

Answering his own question, Sir Branson made a compelling yet simple argument. In its 25 years of existence, the Internet has transformed countless areas of our lives, and, although it has yet to make it into the balloting process massively, it is already affecting politics. From e-petitions to live debates to breaking news, cyberspace is the arena where politics are being played out. 

At this point in time, it is not hard to imagine that most electoral authorities around the world would share Branson’s view on the advantages of Internet voting. Remote online voting expedites the voting experience, simplifies logistics, and reduces costs. As a perfect substitute for traditional mail voting, it is called to facilitate the vote of expatriates. Online voting is also a perfect means to enfranchise disabled voters, a very sensitive group of voters current technology can serve as never before.

But moving from concept to implementation is seldom easy. Internet voting still faces many challenges – e.g. voter coercion, identity fraud, vote selling/buying – that need to be resolved. Authorities must guarantee to the average voter that the vote counted was the same vote cast. And, regardless of the method used to cast a ballot, it must remain secret and secure. 

To circumvent these obstacles many countries – e.g. Estonia, Norway, France, the US, Australia, Switzerland, and India - have experimented with Internet voting achieving varied results. Estonia and Norway, who have used Internet voting in binding elections, have shown contrasting results in recent elections. 

Norway began piloting Internet voting a few years ago. In 2011 a first test was conducted in 10 municipalities and in 2013, two more municipalities were added. Although the pilots showed some early success – 168.000 eligible voters (4.5% of the population) chose to cast their votes online, and 250.000 (7% of population) in 2013 – important security issues forced the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation to put the project to a halt last week. 

One of the most concerning issues raised during the tests was the encryption failure that compromised the secrecy of some 40,000 voters (54% of the total) who exerted their right remotely.

Scytl, the Spanish firm tasked with designing a method to guarantee vote secrecy and security, failed to configure a secure encryption algorithm that would protect the vote being cast in the voter´s personal computer before sending it to consolidation servers. See 2hrs27mins of this video for more details. 

Although Norwegian authorities had acknowledged the technical issues aforementioned, in a recent press release they blamed the lack of broad political support as the reason why the Minister of Local Government and Modernisation, Mr. Jan Tore Sanner, decided not to continue expending public resources on continuing the pilots.

Despite Norway´s set back, there are reasons to believe Internet voting will become a worldwide reality soon. Estonia, the only country that has successfully carried 7 national elections giving its voters the option to cast a ballot remotely, announced two weeks ago the creation of a R & D lab to further develop its platform, and to begin sharing its experience in government elections with electoral commissions from around the world.

Internet in Estonia is succeeding in part to the long term approach authorities adopted. A government controlled lab created over a decade ago, carefully developed a system that has already been used in national contests to great success. In the last European Parliament election in March, a third of the voters used the remote online system. This system will continue to evolve as citizens and Government continue to use it.

Estonia is now called to continue leading the way in making Internet voting a reality for all.