A review of E-voting: the past, present and future

Electronic voting systems are those which depend on some electronic technology for their correct functionality. Many of them depend on such technology for the communication of election data. Depending on one or more communication channels in order to run elections poses many technical challenges with respect to verifiability, dependability, security, anonymity and trust. Changing the way in which people vote has many social and political implications. The role of election administrators and (independent) observers is fundamentally different when complex communications technology is involved in the process. Electronic voting has been deployed in many different types of election throughout the world for several decades. Despite lack of agreement on whether this has been a ‘success’, there has been—in the last few years—enormous investment in remote electronic voting (primarily as a means of exploiting the internet as the underlying communication technology). This paper reviews the past, present and future of on-line voting. It reports on the role of technology transfer, from research to practice, and the range of divergent views concerning the adoption of on-line voting for critical elections.