The Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation has put an end to a pilot project allowing voting on the internet. The main reasons cited are a lack of increase in turnout amid concern that the program could damage confidence in the electoral process. A study performed by the Ministry of the test programs run in their 2011 and 2013 elections shows many conflicting results but, at bottom, the benefits were too slight and the problems too great. Only a summary of the Ministry’s study is available in English. The full study is in Norwegian (PDF). One interesting result was evidence that a small number of voters, 0.75% of all voters, voted twice in 2013. They voted once online and once by conventional paper ballot at a polling station. At the same time, convinced that it is necessary in order to increase disappointing voter participation rates, officials in the US and UK still are pushing for internet voting. As I explained several weeks ago, in the US voting over the internet is creeping in from the bottom up with no real thought being put into the process.
… In the wake of the 2000 US Presidential election in Florida and the light it cast on the mess that election administration is in the US, simultaneous campaigns began both for and against electronic voting devices. Advocates cited the elimination of mechanical problems, hanging chads and butterfly ballots, but critics claimed that the devices could be hacked, calling the legitimacy of elections into question.
If a non-networked device under the physical control of election officials can’t be trusted to collect a vote, how can any arbitrary device connected to the Internet be? Unless I’ve just missed it, the same persons who cried panic over electronic voting machines aren’t calling on Congress to ban internet voting.
Full Article: Norway internet voting experiment fails | ZDNet.
