Jason Kitcat (Brighton, Internet Consultant & Political Activist): It's well known that I'm opposed to the introduction of e-voting and e-counting in the UK. This is fundamentally because the technology of today cannot deliver on the unique requirements of democratic elections. Elections require secrecy, accuracy, anonyminity and verifiability. This is an incredibly difficult combination of requirements to meet. Banks or online shops don't meet all the requirements - while others may not know what you bought (secrecy) unlike voting your identity is known to the bank or vendor (anonyminity) so that they can deliver their services and check if you are a fraudster. By checking your bank statements you have an element of verifiability not available in voting.
While many very clever people are working hard on a variety of cryptographic solutions to these problem, I think they miss the point. I'm not saying that their work isn't interesting or clever. It's just that their proposals are usually very complicated and hard to administer. The result is that they suffer from a lack of transparency as voters and candidates struggle to understand what is going on. Recent demonstrations of promising cryptographic election methods descended into farce when the inventors couldn't administer their mock elections due to the complexity of the procedures.
I just can't see any pressing, convincing reasons to be spending large sums of money and introducing new levels of risk to our voting systems by making them electronic. There are bigger, more important challanges such as climate change or caring for our aging population.
A hundred years from now there may well be a technology or a theoretical breakthrough which makes it trivial to implement e-voting that conforms to the requirements of secrecy, accuracy, anonyminity and verifiability. I can't see such developments on the horizon, but I can't rule them out. I very much doubt I'll still be here in a century, but I rather do hope we'll have been wise enough to focus our brightest on more pressing issues than just making our votes electronic.
Comments
I like the gradualist approach, Anthony.
Of course, the within-family politics would still be disrupted: "What do you mean you want to vote secretly? What are you hiding from me? That means you must be voting for those gay secularist anti-men. How dare you! ..." etc
As enough ticked the box to vote openly - with the incentive of convenience of web voting possible under openness - more elections could be called on the result of the e-vote.
A long time ago now - yeeks! - I wrote an article in oD setting out a case for abolishing the secret ballot on the grounds that if e-voting is coming (as seems inevitable eg in central Asia) then the only way to secure the system was to make it open. My view now is we should get to this gently and not by compulsion, as it is still the case, for example, in religious families in the UK that the wife may want to be able to vote in a way she does not want her husband to know about.
First, I think it should be public if people have gone to the polls or not and on the web. Then you should have a choice about whether to cast your vote openly or not.
The article is here:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/node/355
Anthony Barnett
Sadly anonyminity and secrecy are still definitely required. Otherwise people are at risk of being persecuted for their vote, penalised at work or they could sell their votes.
how about relaxing the constraints a bit?
if we can create an environment in which democracy is truly deliberative - surely a good in itself - then can't we drop both anonymity and secrecy? After all, both these are antinomic to responsible discussion.
I realise they used to be an important part of representative democracy . But are the conditions still such that they are? Moreover, can't we ask the design problem the other way around: what institutions do we need such that we can give up anonymity and secrecy?
Tony
I hope you're not talking about the UK Jason... because anonymity of the cast ballot is a distinct non-requirement. And if you're going to point at eVoting for a lack of secrecy when casting the ballot you need to point the finger at postal voting as well. Strange, no mention of that.
well, i guess this is what I mean - if you're in an environment where you run a real risk of being persecuted or penalised for your vote, there's more wrong than the secret ballot is going to fix. The aim ought to be to fix that environment.
As for vote selling - I really don't think the secret ballot stops that! Why does so much "redistribution" go from the mid-income earners to the mid-income earners? Look at the recent debate over inheritance tax - is there any accounting for that political behavior except vote buying?
Thanks for re-opening this one Alex. I agree it is not a good reason to end the secret ballot just because e-voting is coming. However, as it is we need to consider the consequences of voting systems are are not secure and can be easily stolen. I agree that the Canute approach is a noble one. Go for it! If you don't succeed however, the tide of easily stolen elections will rise over our feet.If it happens, what is the best response to THIS?
Second, I am anyway for open voting as a good and for its own sake. This leads onto a discussion of human nature....
Anthony
Anthony Barnett: I don't think it's a good agument to say that the secret ballot should be abolished because it gets in the way of introducing new-fangled voting methods. Indeed, the fact that secure e-voting seems impossible while preserving the secret ballot is a reason to keep away from e-voting.
As for the idea (expressed in Mr Barnett's article) that a secret ballot is not needed in a mature democracy, this is absolute BUNK. Human nature doesn't change: there will always be people who want to buy votes or use people's voting choices against them. The secret ballot protects from that. Abolishing it in a mature democracy would cause the democracy to regress.
Tony Curzon is right: a voluntary secret ballot is not a secret ballot at all: the fact that someone chooses to vote in secret will be used against them.
Well put Alex:- 'the fact that secure e-voting seems impossible while preserving the secret ballot is a reason to keep away from e-voting.'
The reasons to hold ballots in secret, to avoid coercion and bribery, are as strong to-day as they were when the Chartists called for it in the Peoples Charter of 1838.
It was also enshrined, in 1966, in Article 25 of the 'International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights'
(b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors;
Go to :-
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/a_ccpr.htm
Nothing has changed.
In these days of the database state our need for a secret ballot is perhaps even greater. Our present 'masters' are gradually accruing vast amounts of information, on all of us, mainly by the inappropriate use of technology. OK has had some excellent blogs and comments on this.
Knowing who voted for you would give any government, and perhaps this one in particular, yet more information by which they could maintain/increase their grip on power. It could lead to them only employing loyal voters in all of the corridors of power, thus severely curtailing democracy. Government contracts could be awarded only to companies employing the most 'party' loyalists. The possibilities for mis-use of this information are endless.
Other employers may well be prejudiced against employing 'voters' of a different persuasion. Pressures within families could be intolerable. Coercion from government down would be inevitable. We are not all fearless political warriors.
Bribery was rampant before secret ballots were introduced. Beer being one of the most used and cheaper bribes. Whose to say that I may not weaken if the right wine was offered.
To jettison the secret ballot so that a new shiny sexier method of registering votes can be implemented would be crazy.
Anthony Barnett:: So the secret ballot should be abolished because of the danger of stolen votes? That's like saying that property law should be abolished because property is often stolen. It's not an argument. Just as the way we deal with property theft is by securing our property, and enforcing laws so that thieves are punished, the way to prevent stolen votes is to secure/audit the conduct of elections, and punish people who steal votes.
Your open ballot concept is essentially utopian. The basic problem with utopian ideas is that they only work if people always behave exactly as you would expect/want them to. The reality is that they don't. That is why Communism failed. It could only work if everyone was willing to be become pawns in the state's economic plan and renounce their own ambitions, property and individuality. Similarly, open voting would only work if either everyone was completely honest --- i.e. no-one coerced, bribed or blackmailed other voters --- or if everyone was willing to vote according to the wishes of those with power over them. Neither of these are true, and that is why we have the secret ballot.
Anthony:: I'm not sure why you think e-voting is so inevitable anyway. It was recently abandoned in the Netherlands (http://www.engadget.com/2007/09/27/dutch-government-abandons-e-voting-for-red-pencil/) after having been used for 17 years. Also the people who are most sceptical of it tend to be the ones who are most knowledgeable about the technology involved. E-voting enthusiasts tend to be the sort of people who are starry-eyed but pig-ignorant about technology. That surely says something about its feasibility.
But if the issue /is/ to be led by those who are ignorant about the realities of what can be achieved by e-voting, and think "It's hi-tech, therefore it's good", that is surely something worth fighting against. It's a good thing that people are making warning noises about the limitations of e-voting now, countering the defeatist "it's inevitable, so we have to go along with it" attitude of some such as yourself, rather than wait until e-voting is established and serious flaws emerge, and it's much more difficult to go back to ballot-box voting .
A good analogy for the latter scenario is with digital rights management (DRM). For the past ~10 years, society has been sleepwalking into a world of intrusive technological copy/access controls on digital media, and DMCA-like laws protecting them. Only recently have the public and lawmakers begun to wake up to the fact that DRM systems are unworkable and intrusive, and the laws protecting them unreasonable. But it's difficult to turn the clock back. DRM is also similar to e-voting in that it's trying to do something with security that is probably logically impossible (protecting data from access by the person for whom it is intended).
I agree with Jason Kitkat, indeed I posted against e-voting in the strongest possible terms five years ago here:
http://forums.opendemocracy.net/e_voting_is_very_bad_idea_0
(copy-paste the above to address bar)
But Jason errs in thinking this is a technical problem. In reality it is a psychological-logical problem. Even if means of making the hardware and software fully secure and anonymised existed, it would still be impossible to make the system sufficiently simple to be comprehensible to the average politician and voter, hence it could not be made to satisfy the criterion of transparency. As soon as you overcome objection x you reintroduce objection z. Good to see that NL has abandoned it, there's still a little hope for the triumph of truth and competence!
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