E-Voting Case Law: A Comparative Analysis, Edited by Ardita Driza Maurer and Jordi Barrat
Alistair Clark · International Journal of Law and Information Technology · 2017
The relationship between technology and politics has been in the news lately. Some examples underline the point. Firstly, there was the claim that the election of Donald Trump as President of the USA had somehow been ‘hacked’ by Russia. Secondly, there have also been claims that Facebook can somehow impact upon the outcome of elections by influencing people’s voting decision, alongside concern at the spread of internet-based ‘fake news’. Thirdly, there was the well-publicised crash of the UK government’s electoral registration website just before the registration deadline in the EU Referendum. The UK’s House of Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee suggested that interference from some form of hacking, whether state sponsored or not, may plausibly have been among one of the explanations for this happening. The link between technology and politics has therefore become high-profile, and controversial. Technological fixes are often suggested as a means of resolving whatever may be broken in politics. One of the main ways in which this has been the case has been in relation to voting. E-voting solutions are often proposed in relation to a number of challenges. A non-exhaustive list might include: the argument that e-voting would halt the decline in turnout; having to organize the vote for geographically remote populations; the mobilization of overseas voters; as a way of protecting against electoral fraud; and updating the archaic, inconvenient, old-fashioned way in which voting is done in most countries, in person at a physical location marking a ballot paper.