In my country, there is e-voting


LawMeme reports that Kazakhstan held a successful e-vote.
In its parliamentary elections, Kazakhstan adopted e-voting in 10% of its polling stations. International observers from the OSCE noted some drawbacks to the e-voting system: Statement of Preliminary Findings and Conclusions

The State Commission responsible by law for making the decision to establish e-voting was not formed until five days before election day. As a result, the scope of e-voting was not decided until 17 September, and some PECs appeared poorly prepared. According to the CEC decision, electronic voting was to be used in 961 of 9,480 polling stations.

The e-voting system was not openly and independently certified, which would have promoted confidence in the system by domestic stakeholders. A review was carried out by a group composed of experts invited by CEC and experts nominated by some political parties, but the IEOM expert was not allowed to observe on grounds of confidentiality. The group concluded that “hacking into the system and falsifying the election results were ruled out,” although one political party representative declined to sign the report. This group of experts did not publish detailed technical arguments for these conclusions.
The system does not include a manual audit capacity, and therefore there is no possibility for a recount. The system does generate, if requested by the voter directly after voting, a private PIN code not linked to the voter which could be used to check the final control protocols, thus providing the voter with the possibility to confirm that his or her vote was recorded correctly. However, that same PIN code, if provided by the voter to a party, candidate, or employer, would demonstrate how he or she voted. This opens the potential for violation of the secrecy of the vote as well as intimidation.
Protection against manipulation from outside or incidental technical malfunction appeared sufficient. The system generated redundant, periodic local backups, and all data transmission sent through communication lines was encrypted. However, the system uses normal telephone connections between polling stations and Regional Election Commissions, and these are potentially vulnerable to unauthorized monitoring or to distortion of transmitted information.

See also: In my country, there is treaty.

Andrew Raff @andrewraff