Victorian Electoral Commission W

Submission to theInquiry into Electronic Democracy

January 2005

SummaryThis submission presents the views of the Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) on electronic democracy specifically in relation to election processes. As background, the submission explains the role of the VEC and its current use of electronic technology in the following areas:

electronic electoral and enrolment administration; online enrolment lookup; electronic draw for ballot positions; and electronic vote counting.

The submission then considers possible future applications of electronic technology in electoral processes. Firstly, the submission sets out a framework, from the VEC’s perspective, of what makes a change worth enacting. From the VEC’s point of view, changes are worthwhile if:

a) they solve the following problems with the existing system:

difficulties achieving access to voting and secret voting for people with certain disabilities (most notably visual and motor impairments);

accidental informal voting; difficulties for people with poor English

language skills; and difficulties for people in remote locations within

the State and for people outside the State at election time.

and/orb) they move practices closer than the present system to

attaining the following goals: all people whom it is considered appropriate to

enfranchise have the opportunity to vote; voters vote free from coercion; voters vote knowledgably, after due deliberation; results are known in a timely manner; and votes are recorded and counted as voters intend, and

voters have confidence that this is so.In light of this framework, the VEC presents an analysis of five possible changes to the conduct of Victorian elections:

internet and telephone voting; voting on computer kiosks at polling places;

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automated vote scanning; voters adding themselves to the electoral register and

changing their details online; and the provision of candidates’ policy information online by the

VEC.A summary of the analysis is presented in Table 1 on page 35.The VEC has reached the following conclusions:

there are currently significant security concerns with internet voting and low public confidence in it and, until these are resolved, internet voting should not be pursued other than on a very limited and controlled scale (e.g. for Antarctic voters);

computer voting kiosks at polling places would provide many benefits for people with various disabilities and for people with poor English, while avoiding substantial concern about security;

the VEC intends to explore the possibility of developing a prototype computer voting kiosk to be trialled on a limited scale in selected pre-poll and election day voting centres at the next State election;o the VEC considers that the most benefit would come

from targeting this trial at voters with disabilities and voters with poor English language skills;

o the paper printing of ballots for verification by voters would not be appropriate in this situation, particularly as one of the main groups at which computer voting would be targeted would be the vision-impaired;

o such a trial would be subject to:1. legislation enabling the electronic recording of votes

at selected pre-poll and election day voting centres (the VEC has recommended that government consider enabling legislation providing for this);

2. legislative change allowing early voting as of right (which the VEC has recommended to government already);

3. the outcomes of a feasibility study to be undertaken by the VEC; and

4. the provision of sufficient funds. automated vote scanning by optical character recognition

should be pursued if favourable results come from the AEC’s feasibility study of this facility;

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the benefits of allowing people to modify their details on the electoral register online or enrol to vote online do not outweigh the potential risks; and

the VEC should not take on an increased role of providing candidate policy information.

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1 The VEC’s roles and functionsThe Victorian Electoral Commission (VEC) undertakes a number of activities relating to elections in Victoria, as set out in the Electoral Act 2002 and elsewhere. These include:

the administration of the Victorian enrolment register; the conduct of Victorian parliamentary elections and

referenda; the conduct of local government elections when appointed by

councils; the provision of other services using the information, material

in its possession or expertise acquired in the performance of its functions (such as local government electoral representation reviews, jury lists, statutory, commercial and community elections, and work in support of the Electoral Boundaries Commission);

the promotion of public awareness of electoral matters; and the conduct and promotion of research into electoral matters.

The VEC also notes its commitment to promoting cost-effective ways of improving access to voting for those for whom access is currently difficult.The VEC is pleased to present this submission to the Inquiry into Electronic Democracy from the perspective of its involvement in the conduct of elections and in its capacity as a conductor of research into electoral matters. On these bases, the VEC can consider issues both from an operational perspective and in terms of their relation to a healthy electoral system. However, the VEC emphasises that its principle business is the conduct of elections, and that it has not had the opportunity to undertake comprehensive research into all possibilities and issues associated with this subject.In providing comments, the VEC bears in mind its own possible future involvement in changes brought about by new applications of electronic technology. In particular, the VEC emphasises the importance of it maintaining complete impartiality in the conduct of elections and of ensuring public confidence in the electoral process. As part of maintaining public confidence, the VEC considers it essential that every election it conducts be treated with the same degree of importance and aim for the same degree of accuracy and security. The VEC therefore strongly rejects the notion of using local government elections as testing grounds for risky technology.1

Finally, the VEC emphasises that there are political dimensions to changes in the way that elections are run. However, these are matters for Government and the Parliament to consider, rather than the VEC.1 Cf. Chen et al. (2002), pp. 62, 64 with p. 29.

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2 The VEC’s current use of electronic technology in electoral-related activities

The VEC has already adopted electronic technology to assist it in a number of areas. These changes have primarily brought about benefits from an operational point of view and all are concerned with behind-the-scenes aspects rather than the actual voting process for voters.2.1 Electronic electoral and enrolment administration

Election administrationSince 1998, the VEC has had an “Election Management System” (EMS) – a custom-built software application – which it has used in the preparation for and conduct of State, local government and other elections. EMS assists the VEC in the following elements of elections:

managing resources, locations and personnel; administering nominations and candidate

statements (including functions like checking statements for profanities), determining candidates’ orders on ballot papers (see Section 2.3), producing how to vote cards etc.;

tallying votes – including from data entered in computer counts (see Section 2.4) – and processing data from manual counts;

issuing and processing postal votes; checking voters’ details against the rolls for

absent and declaration votes; and enforcing compulsory voting.

During the conduct of an election, much of the work is done in Election Offices (which are located within electorates or, in the case of local government elections, within municipalities), as well as in the VEC central office in Melbourne. EMS is accessible from all relevant locations, providing a centralised database with a consolidated view of the election that can be readily accessed from all offices. The software has also enabled a number of business functions to be undertaken more quickly and effectively than in the past.There may be a view that the VEC should make the EMS source code available in the public arena as a method of ensuring transparency in the electoral process. However, only two of the many components of EMS have any bearing on election outcomes – the electronic ballot draw (see Section 2.3) and the algorithm within the computer count module that calculates the correct distribution of preferences (see Section 2.4). The VEC has taken a number of measures to ensure that these

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components do not bias outcomes. Firstly, the VEC has rigorously tested the software. Secondly, the VEC has had the software audited and certified by an independent expert agent. Thirdly, the VEC provides the raw data of voting preferences to scrutineers, so that they can calculate the results for themselves, thereby verifying the accuracy of the EMS application. Therefore, the VEC does not consider it necessary in this case to make the source code available to the public.Roll administrationThe VEC keeps a continually-updated electronic database of Victorian electors referred to as the enrolment register. The VEC produces a number of products from this register, including voting rolls for State and local government elections, jury lists and lists of electors for members of parliament and registered political parties. It is important for this register to be kept up-to-date given the possibility of by-elections being called at any time and the short time frame between elections being called and rolls needing to be produced. Rolls need to be ready in time to check the validity of nominations early in the election period, as well as being ready by election day to check the eligibility of voters.Prior to 1993, the VEC was dependant on the federal enrolment register to produce rolls for State elections. Since 1993, the VEC has been able to keep an independent Victorian enrolment register, enabling it to add State-specific elements (e.g. State voting districts) to the data and to produce rolls for the elections it conducts. At the same time, though Victoria’s register is distinct from the federal register, its electronic nature means that the Victorian register can still be easily updated with changes made to the federal register. That way, voters need only modify their details or enrol to vote once for both Federal and State elections.A number of other benefits come from the electronic nature of the register:

the various products created from the register can be produced quickly;

products can be provided to appropriate stakeholders electronically (e.g. to candidates for mail-outs);

voters’ details can be verified quickly and easily;

rolls can be scanned by computers after elections to identify people who have not voted;

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when boundaries for voting districts are redrawn, voters can easily be re-coded from one district to another;

the possibility of directly scanning people’s enrolment forms (rather than keying in the data manually) exists, although it is not currently actualised;

statistical information can be readily produced for conducting State and local government boundary reviews to ensure that numbers of voters within areas meet legislative requirements;

the VEC has been able to implement a series of initiatives aimed at keeping the register as up-to-date as possible through comparing the register with data from other organisations such as VicRoads and the Residential Tenancies Bond Authority, which can be done automatically by computers; and

provisional votes can be verified on election night so that a result can be declared as quickly as possible.

These abilities have provided significant operational benefits and reduced costs. For example, the initiatives aimed at keeping the register up-to-date by electronic means have replaced door knocks, which were more expensive and, as they occurred less often, were less up-to-date. The electronic register has also recently enabled the VEC to introduce online enrolment lookup (see Section 2.2).An additional functionality of the electronic register was trialled at the last State election. In selected polling places (including those interstate and overseas), rather than checking eligibility and recording who voted on paper electoral rolls, voters were checked against and recorded on a digital version of the rolls on laptops. In addition to providing faster and more accurate verification of who did and who did not vote, this was particularly valuable for absentee voters, as voters’ presence on rolls for other electorates, and exactly which ballot they should be provided with, could be instantaneously ascertained. The use of laptops in this way is something that the VEC is considering expanding at the 2006 State election.An important consequence of storing the register electronically is that it facilitates the production of mail-out lists from the data. The Electoral Act 2002 makes specific provision for the supply of enrolment information to certain specified stakeholders. However, a freely-available electronic mail-out list could compromise the integrity of the enrolment register, as voters may be unwilling to enrol or keep their enrolment up to date due to concern about where the data go. Consequently,

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whereas in earlier times the register was sold to any interested party, the Electoral Act 2002 requires the Electoral Commissioner to balance the public interest in providing information with the privacy interests of electors when dealing with requests for the provision of enrolment information by parties other than those stakeholders specified by the Act. Now only very few agencies are provided with data from the register.

2.2 Online enrolment lookupVictorian voters can verify their enrolment details over the internet, from any location at any time convenient to them. Not only can they check that their personal details are correct, but voters can also check what electorates and wards they live in. This can be particularly important for people around the time of council elections, when people may or may not have to vote depending on which municipality and which ward they live in. It is also of assistance for people trying to find out who their elected representatives are.The process occurs automatically, with no input required from VEC staff. This replaces the situation of voters needing to telephone the VEC during office hours and VEC staff verifying their details for them (more recently on computer and earlier on microfiche). This service enables voters to verify their details more conveniently and with far less labour required from the VEC. In the three weeks before the close of the 2004 council elections, 222 voters’ details were successfully looked up using the online enrolment lookup facility. This number will grow with publicity and increased public understanding.To protect people’s privacy, a user has to enter specific details about a person into the program, more than one needs to enter if checking the register in person at the VEC office. Similarly, one can only enter incorrect data a certain number of times before the program refuses to allow the user to perform any more searches.

2.3 Electronic draw for ballot positionsLegislation requires the VEC to randomly determine the order in which candidates are listed on ballots. Traditionally, this was determined by blindfold and bingo-barrel draw. However, the EMS software (see Section 2.1) includes the ability to provide a randomly-ordered list of candidates easily and in a matter of seconds.The faster and easier production of the order of candidates has enabled the faster provision of information to the media during elections, and reduces the risk of problems (such as appearances of impropriety) coming from the blindfold and bingo-barrel method.

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The facility has been used at the last two State elections. There is currently no legal basis for its use at local government elections, but the VEC is holding discussions with Local Government Victoria to address this. Some Returning Officers have expressed a preference for the traditional method, based on nostalgia for “the spectacle” of the traditional method and based on its more clearly transparent nature. That is, any viewer can see clearly that there has been no tampering with a bingo-barrel, but that cannot be readily seen with a computer. However, there have not been serious challenges to the electronic draw for ballot positions from candidates or from members of the public.

2.4 Electronic vote countingAs part of the EMS software (see Section 2.1), the VEC can enter voters’ preferences into a database that then calculates which candidates have been successful. This has been particularly useful in electorates using proportional representation (many of Victoria’s councils and, from the next State election, regions for Victoria’s Legislative Council), where the calculation of results can be quite complicated. Teams of data entry operators can enter voters’ preferences into a central server over a secure LAN (all data entry is conducted at one location, so there is no need to pass information over potentially insecure lines).As operators enter preferences, the computer checks the entry against the formality rules. Any breech of the formality rules is brought to the operator’s attention so that he or she can correct the data if an error has been made in entering the data. If no data entry error has been made, then the informal ballot is put aside to be reconsidered later (and may be entered at a later stage if it is deemed formal). Various checks are included to ensure that all ballots put aside are reconsidered, and that all ballots are entered.So far, this system has only been used for local government elections where there have been large numbers of candidates, and usually where proportional representation is the voting method. In local government elections, the rules for formality are that voters must indicate a preference for all candidates (except for their last preference candidate). This makes it very difficult for data entry operators to mis-enter data without breaching the rules of formality. This is in contrast to the ACT’s optional preferential system, where voters generally only indicate preferences up to the number of vacancies. Under the ACT’s system, data entry errors have occurred in around 1 in 268 ballots, for which reason Elections ACT have considered it necessary to double-enter all ballots.2 In contrast, the error rate

2 Elections ACT (2002), p. 17.

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with local government elections in Victoria with this system has been found in recounts to be extremely low or non-existent. From six recent recounts of computer counts, the final results were either an exact match of the initial counts or varied by only one vote. Therefore, the VEC does not considered double-entry necessary for local government elections. As part of its preparation for the 2006 State election, the VEC will be assessing what changes need to be made to procedures in order to use this system for the Legislative Council.The final result (which usually requires a distribution of preferences) is not calculated until all ballots have been entered or accounted for. Scrutineers are entitled to watch the data entry process to ensure that this is done correctly and to see ballots as they are processed. At regular intervals during the data entry process, reports of the first preferences of all ballots entered so far are printed and given to scrutineers. To ensure that the results are correctly calculated from the data, the software is certified by independent auditors and an electronic file with all preferences is provided to interested scrutineers so that they can calculate the results from these data for themselves.This system has enabled the VEC to calculate complex election results much faster and more accurately than with manual counts. In particular, this system does a better job of preventing informal ballots being counted than manual counting, as the computer identifies these more effectively than manual sorters.There has been some distrust of this system from scrutineers. A number of functions have been added to the software in response to this (such as the periodic first preference reports and the provision of a data file of all preferences for all ballots to scrutineers who wish to calculate the result for themselves). This distrust may be indicative of the reaction that people may have to other forms of electronic voting as well. However, no evidence has been provided to suggest serious faults with the system. The VEC considers the computer count to be the most practicable way by far to calculate the results by proportional representation for large electorates, and intends to use it for calculating results for Victoria’s Legislative Council at the 2006 State election.

3 The VEC’s perspective on future changesIt is clear that electronic technology has the capacity to change the way a number of electoral activities are conducted, including enrolling, voting, and vote counting. What is less clear is whether or not these changes would be for the better. As a way of determining this, the VEC has produced two testing methods which can be applied to proposed changes to determine whether or not they are

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worth pursuing from the VEC’s perspective (bearing in mind the VEC’s roles and functions as outlined in Section 1). The first method involves looking at whether electronic technology has the potential to solve problems with the existing system. The second method assesses whether potential changes lead us closer to or further from the goal of a healthy democracy. In addition to these methods of assessing the worth of changes, it is also important to consider the cost and any operational advantages or problems.With these factors, what is important is whether or not the future use of technology solves a problem or achieves a goal more than the current system does. In recent years, the VEC has introduced a number of electronic and non-electronic initiatives, such as postal voting, Braille voting templates and electronic vote counting. Changes which are no more effective than these options, but which may be more expensive or undermine public confidence, can hardly seem worthwhile.3.1 Problem-solving

The first method for testing changes comes from determining what problems with the current system might be solved by electronic technology. The VEC identifies the following problems with the current system:

1. people with certain disabilities (especially visual and motor impairments) are unable to vote without assistance (and therefore they cannot vote secretly);

2. ballot papers can be so large that people accidentally vote informally;3

3. people with poor English may find it difficult to understand what to do;4 and

4. some people in remote locations or outside the State have difficulty voting.

The VEC considers that changes to the system which reduce these problems would be beneficial.Proponents of electronic voting often also cite the following theoretically possible problems that could be solved by electronic technology:

people submitting multiple ballots; inaccurate vote counting; lost ballots; and poor voter turnouts.

3 VEC data on local government elections show the rate of informal voting to be generally proportional to the number of candidates on a ballot.4 The rate of informality is also proportional to the quantity of non-English speakers – VEC (n.d.),pp. 2-3.

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However, in practice, these possibilities are not evident as problems in Victorian elections. Most notably, the common conception that manual vote counting must lead to substantial errors is not borne out in practice – recounts show only small discrepancies.

3.2 Does it move us closer to our goals?The second method of testing the worth of potential changes is to see whether they help us to achieve our goals. The primary goals for the VEC in running elections are to conduct fair and impartial elections, efficiently and according to law, and to maintain the integrity of the Victorian electoral system. Changes to the system should be implemented if they move us closer to these goals and not be implemented if they move us further from them.Fair and impartial elections would come from an electoral system exhibiting the following characteristics:5

all people whom it is considered appropriate to enfranchise would have the opportunity to vote;

voters would vote free from coercion; voters would vote knowledgably, after due deliberation; results would be known in a timely manner; and voters would vote successfully (see below).

The last characteristic can be broken down into three factors:6

voters are easily able to convert their choices exactly as they intend into commands to the system (which would be manifested by a reduction in accidental informal voting);

the system records and processes the voters’ choices correctly (i.e. security/accuracy concerns are insubstantial); and

there is public confidence in the results produced by the system.

The last factor (public confidence) should be especially noted, as it may operate independently of our ability to meet the other goals (i.e. there may be dissonance between our ability to ensure accuracy with electronic equipment and people’s confidence that we can ensure accuracy).We can use the goals above as a set of tests for any proposed new applications. That is, if we imagine a continuum on each of these dimensions between no success and 100% success at achieving the goal (with all real-world systems somewhere

5 Cf. Smith (2002), Barry et al. (2002), pp. 14-17.6 Saltman (2003), p. 3.

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between those extremes), we can assess whether the introduction of an electronic technique moves the system towards 0% or 100% relative to current techniques.The six dimensions to test on would be:

1. how many electors would have access to voting?2. how free would they be from coercion (which is only

guaranteed by secret voting)?3. how knowledgeable would electors be in making their choices?4. how soon after voting would results be known?

[“how many voters would avoid accidentally informally voting?” would also be a dimension except that it already appears in testing method 1]

5. how secure and accurate would the recording/counting process be?6. how much confidence would the public have in the system?

On all of these questions, the closer to 100% our answer is, the better. And, as previously stated, what is relevant is not how successfully the possible electronic applications reach these goals, but whether the electronic applications come closer to the goals than the current system.Given that any change is likely to reduce public confidence (simply by virtue of being change) and given the cost of implementing most proposed changes to the system, possible electronic applications would only be worth pursuing if there is a substantial improvement in terms of achieving these goals.To give some idea of the scope for improvement, though, it should be noted that at the 2002 State election, there were 102,791 informal votes cast for the Lower House and 110,422 for the Upper House (which exceeded 5% of the total votes in some electorates). The overall rate of informal votes is slightly higher in local government elections, and the rate of informal votes has been as high as 19% in some wards in some municipalities. VEC analysis of the 1988 State election indicated that deliberate informal voting may account for as little as ¼ of informal voting, the remainder being accidental.7 In addition to informal votes, there were 220,868 eligible people who, for various reasons, did not vote at the 2002 State election.An additional point to note is that there will be substantial changes to the way that members of the Upper House will be elected from the next State election. Currently, one member is elected from each of 22 provinces at each election. From the

7 VEC (n.d.), p. 15.

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next election, five members will be elected from each of eight regions at each election. As a result, there will be substantially larger numbers of votes in each electorate and members will be elected by proportional representation. Results using proportional representation are significantly harder to calculate than results under the current system. Proportional representation with five councillors per province also makes it easier for independent candidates and candidates from small parties to be elected, so it is likely that there will be more candidates on each ballot compared to previous years. These added complexities will provide a number of challenges, and the VEC has been looking to technology to help it meet them.

3.3 Costs and operational benefitsA third level of assessment would be to examine the costs and (usually related) the administrative efficiencies of the proposed change relative to the existing system. This factor is important from two perspectives. High costs or substantial operational difficulties might outweigh the benefits of a change. In addition, concepts that are essentially neutral in terms of our testing methods (i.e. that do not solve identified problems or move us closer to a healthier democracy than the present system), may be worth pursuit because they offer cost savings or operational efficiencies. The electronic applications so far adopted by the VEC are predominantly of this nature.

3.4 Community calls for changes to the current systemThe VEC has received very little call from the community for electronic voting, and few complaints about existing voting procedures. There has been some push for change from vision-impaired members of the community, who have particularly advocated forms of electronic voting providing secret voting for vision-impaired voters.The VEC’s introduction of electronic vote counting has been largely accepted with public confidence.

4 Analysis of possible future applicationsThere are a number of possible applications of electronic technology that could be applied to electoral processes. This submission will explore each in turn, analysing in light of the framework developed in Section 3. A summary of this analysis can be found in Table 1 on page 35. From a technical point of view, computer4.1 Computer voting – general matters

There are a number of different ways that computers can be used in voting. However, the following advantages would appear in all forms of computer-based voting to be considered in this submission:

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1. people with visual impairments could be catered for by large print or through headphones providing recorded voice instructions and recordings of the options;

2. the computer could alert people if their vote is informal, giving them the opportunity to correct it before submitting;

3. voting instructions could be available in any language;4. images such as party logos or colour photographs could

be included with little extra cost, which can help people with certain communication and learning impairments (if legislation were changed to permit it);8

5. votes could be counted faster;6. voters could be easily provided with ballots appropriate to

their electorate no matter where they vote; and7. votes may be counted more accurately.

The first four of these advantages would solve identified problems by:

increasing the number of people with access to voting; providing secret voting for some people for whom this has

not been possible before; substantially reducing9 accidental informal voting; and helping people with poor English language skills to

understand.In terms of achieving goals, these advantages increase the number of people able to vote, increase freedom from coercion by providing extra secrecy, enable more knowledgeable voting for people with poor English and increase the ease with which voters’ desires are converted into votes counted by the system.The fifth and sixth advantages do not solve problems, but do move us towards more timely results, although the extra speed may not be substantial. The last advantage is not particularly important as procedures currently in place ensure quite accurate counts of votes (see Section 3.1).There are a couple of areas where non-electronic methods could and have been used to reduce some of these problems. However, computer voting has the potential to provide solutions that are more satisfactory. At the 2002 State election, Braille ballot templates were introduced to assist voters with vision impairments, and were well received.10 However, there are

8 Morris et al. (2002), p. 10; Fielding (2004), p. 12.9 Although most of the common problems (such as using the same number twice or missing a number) would be eliminated, people may still err in their use of the computer – see Elections ACT (2002), pp. 10, 12.10 VEC (2003), p. 40.

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limits to Braille ballot templates – most notably, limitations to the size (which is likely to become a problem with the new voting arrangement for the Legislative Council at the next State election) – and not all blind people can read Braille. A computer that can play recordings of instructions and options to voters through headphones has wider applicability.At the 2002 State election, the VEC provided posters with instructions in sixteen languages at all polling places and provided multi-lingual staff in areas where high proportions of the population speak languages other than English. Despite these programmes, however, 17% of voters surveyed from linguistically-diverse backgrounds required assistance from another person while actually voting.11 VEC research on the 1988 election showed that rates of informal voting were noticeably higher in areas with large numbers of people from non English-speaking backgrounds.12 With computers, instructions in multiple languages could be provided cheaply, easily and privately. Instructions provided thus would also have the potential to be more effective because voters could call them up as they are in the process of voting without any potential or perceived loss of secrecy. The model of electronic voting used at the past two ACT elections, wherein voting machines automatically ask all voters to select a language at the start of the voting process, also avoids any problems from voters feeling awkward about having to ask for instructions in their preferred language.It would be possible to print material in languages other than English for State and local government elections, but one should note the high cost of producing printed materials and the difficulty within the tight timeframes provided between the close of nominations and election day.Though there are these advantages to computer voting, there are also a number of disadvantages. These vary depending on the model of computer voting and will be discussed separately.The technical requirements of any computer voting system were well set out by Bill Jones and the California Internet Voting Task Force. They set out a series of benchmarks to measure any future applications with respect to security (including privacy) and reliability.13 Regarding privacy and security, any system should be able to achieve the following:

voter authentication; assurance that votes are not forged or modified

surreptitiously;

11 VEC (2003), p. 40.12 VEC (n.d.), pp. 2-3.13 Jones (2000), Appendix A, pp. 3, 28.

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vote secrecy; assurance that no vote is lost; assurance that no voter can vote twice defence against denial of service attacks on vote servers

and clients; and defence against malicious code attacks on vote clients.

Any system would also have to achieve the following with respect to reliability:

the entire system should operate properly even in the face of most kinds of local (single point) failures;

its performance should tend to degrade smoothly, rather than catastrophically, with additional failures;

voters should have solid feedback so that they know unambiguously whether their votes were affected by any failures;

the probability of a global system-wide failure should be remote;

the rarest of technical failures should be those that result in votes being lost after the voters have received feedback that the votes were accepted; and

procedures should be in place to protect against accidental or malicious human failures resulting in incorrect results.

4.2 Internet and telephone votingBenefits of internet votingInternet voting would provide all of the benefits outlined in Section 4.1, and could also solve problems for people who are unable to travel to a polling place due to disabilities, due to being in remote locations (within Australia or overseas) or due to other practical difficulties (e.g. having to work, being a carer). That is, in terms of our framework, it reduces all of the identified problems and it increases the number of electors with access to voting. It is worth noting that 17,600 people voted from interstate or overseas in the 1999 Victorian State election and 8,200 at the 2002 State election.At present, people who cannot make it to a polling place in Victoria on election day (be it due to travel, disability or certain other difficulties) have a number of options available. They can:

vote before election day at pre-polling centres in Victoria; vote at a number of interstate and international locations

before election day; or

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request a postal vote and vote from anywhere in the world.

Victorian electors in Antarctica at the 2002 State election were e-mailed Word documents representing the appropriate ballots papers in the prescribed format. They then entered their preferences electronically into the files and e-mailed them back to a mail box to which only the Electoral Commissioner and one other VEC staff member had access. The staff member then transcribed the preferences onto actual ballot papers, which were then inserted into declaration envelopes, signed by the Electoral Commissioner and sent to the appropriate returning officer for counting with the other ballots. Clearly, complete secrecy was not available with these arrangements. These circumstances are recognised by making voting non-compulsory for electors in Antarctica. It is worth noting that there were only seven Antarctic voters at the 2002 election, and only fourteen at the 1999 election.Whilst these options provide the possibility of voting for a substantial number of electors, these are not viable options for all people. Some voters may not be near interstate or international voting centres, and may have left Victoria before pre-polling centres opened. The time taken to request a postal ballot, receive it by mail and return it by mail may mean that the vote does not arrive in Victoria in time to be counted, especially for voters in more remote locations or in countries with slow or unreliable postal services. Voters continually travelling may also find it difficult to receive post.In contrast, voting over the internet could (in theory) be done from any location, with the voters’ selections immediately transmitted to Victoria. Internet voting could thus make voting practicable for people in the above situations, as well as providing the advantages set out in Section 4.1. Internet voting also has the potential to make voting more convenient for many people within Victoria, and may help people to spend longer considering their vote, providing voters with the opportunity to vote more knowledgeably.Concerns about internet votingThere are, however, serious difficulties with respect to:

security issues (regarding the authenticity and accuracy of votes) – both perceived and real; and

the potential for coercion and fraud if people vote in unsupervised locations.

The risk of coercion and fraud due to voting in unsupervised locations is no greater than the risk with postal voting. However, security concerns regarding authenticity and accuracy would be serious.

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With respect to the general public, a number of surveys have indicated poor levels of confidence in the security of voting over the internet:

in Britain, following trials of various forms of e-voting in 2002, only 45% of voters, and 41% of non-voters, considered the methods free from fraud;14

in the USA in 2004, a survey found that only 32% had trust in “using a computer at your home, office, or some other place of your choice to cast your ballot over the Internet.”15

Interestingly, one survey about electronic voting machines found that younger people were more likely to be concerned about vote tampering than older people,16 suggesting that the cause of distrust in electronic voting is not just fear of unfamiliar technology by older people, though another survey found a clear relationship between age and distrust in internet voting.17

Concerns are not just limited to the general public. A report by a number of computer science academics about the U.S. Department of Defense’s SERVE programme concluded that various security vulnerabilities “are fundamental in the architecture of the Internet and of the PC hardware and software that is ubiquitous today. They cannot all be eliminated for the foreseeable future …” and that “the goal of a secure, all-electronic remote voting system … [is] an essentially impossible task.”18 The report also suggests that large-scale undetectable vote tempering would be possible.In practice, however, various companies offer internet voting for commercial elections, and it has been trialled without serious problems in UK local government elections and elsewhere around the world. From the VEC’s point of view, a number of difficulties arise from the techniques used to verify the authenticity and accuracy of votes. To maximise security, some US organisations running internet elections have:

issued each voter with a unique PIN; and in one case, required voters to install software before

voting.19

In British local government elections, it was not considered necessary for voters to install new software, but it was still considered necessary to send PINs to electors prior to polling

14 NOP World (2002).15 Newkirk (2004), p. 5; American Association of People with Disabilities (2004).16 FindLaw (2004).17 Newkirk (2004), p. 12.18 Jefferson et al. (2004), pp. 2-3. Cf. Jorba (2004).19 Barry et al. (2001), p. 7.

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day. Concerns have been expressed that PINs sent by mail could be intercepted, but this represents no greater risk than postal voting. More importantly, however, the need for voters to receive PINs by mail would mean that the system would be just as inaccessible as postal voting for the people listed above for whom the current arrangements are impractical.It has also been suggested that people should have to provide a more personal identifier, that people would be reluctant to pass on to others, to prevent voters selling PINs. A number of systems require voters to enter both a PIN sent to them and a more personal identifier. This in itself raises the possibility of serious consequences if third parties surreptitiously intercept these transmissions and discover people’s personal identifiers.20

Whatever identifiers are used, however, their remains a fundamental problem, with regard to public confidence, arising from the fact that voters would have to transmit both who they are and how they vote in the same transaction. Even though software could be such that voting preferences would not be connected to the personal details in terms of what the electoral commission receives, voters may not feel comfortable that this is so. Furthermore, there exists the possibility of a person’s personal details and their votes being intercepted together by a third party through the use of monitoring software.Another point of concern is the possibility of “denial of service” attacks, which can be easily launched and can render a website unusable. Such an attack was recently launched against the website providing students with their ENTER scores, demonstrating the allure of disrupting such high-usage websites.21 While various measures can be taken to mitigate the effects of attacks, they cannot be prevented and generally cannot be stopped quickly. The consequences of a successful attack, particularly if internet voting were only offered over a short period or if the attack were launched a couple of hours before the close of polls, could be that substantial numbers of people miss the opportunity to vote.Thus, internet voting may move us further away from our goal of security and accuracy in recording votes and from the goal of public confidence in the system.Regardless of these concerns, if voters have to install new software on their computers, or if they have to pre-register to receive PINs, the advantage of convenience over the current arrangements (including postal voting) for most people is lost. For many people, internet voting would therefore offer few if any advantages compared to postal voting or computer voting in polling places. Advantage would only remain for:

20 Cf. Jones (2000), Appendix A, pp. 36f.21 Leung et al. (2004).

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people in remote locations for reasonable lengths of time (especially Antarctica), from which postal votes may take too long to return to Victoria to be counted; and

people whose disabilities:o make it difficult to attend a polling place; and alsoo make it difficult to fill out a postal ballot or to do it

secretly.Telephone votingVoting via telephones, either by responding on the keypad to voice commands and options or by text messaging, is similar to internet voting in many ways. As with internet voting, telephone voting facilitates voting for electors who find it hard to travel to a polling place on election day or who are not currently able to vote secretly due to disability. Telephone voting also provides some of the general advantages of computer voting, such as alerting people if their vote is informal, providing instructions in languages other than English, faster and more accurate vote counting and ready provision of votes appropriate to a voter’s electorate.Telephone voting has the advantage that whereas not all Victorians have easy access to the internet (only 38.6% of Victorians used the internet in the week prior to the 2001 Census), almost all have a telephone in their home. Telephone voting is clearly well adapted to vision-impaired voters. However, voting in response to voice commands is of limited usefulness to the hearing-impaired. Voting via SMS text messaging could cater for the hearing-impaired, but then telephone voting would be restricted to only those hearing-impaired voters with access to mobile phones (people could use teletypewriting systems, but in so doing would lose the secrecy of their vote). However, the hearing-impaired are not a group that the VEC considers to be excluded from secret voting by the present arrangements, albeit that the VEC acknowledges that the process is harder for them.During the UK local government elections in 2002, telephone voting was trialled in a number of municipalities. Overall, it received only limited support – consistently less than internet voting and postal voting.22

The Victorian electoral system, however, may not be as conducive to telephone voting as the British. Whereas in the British elections, voters only had to select one candidate, Victoria’s preferential system means that voters have to indicate a preference for all candidates. Using a telephone keypad to navigate through voice recordings or candidates’ names until all candidates are ordered (which can be as many

22 The Electoral Commission (2002), pp. 45-46.

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as 28 in local government elections, and a yet to be seen amount in State Legislative Council elections under the new arrangements) would be time consuming and may be irritating for voters.If voters had to SMS all the candidates’ names in their order of preference, this would also be time consuming and liable to high levels of informality. Furthermore, research in the UK showed a strong reaction against SMS voting among the public because it was thought to trivialise the voting process (even though the same groups showed fair support for other forms of electronic voting).23

In addition to these difficulties, telephone voting would be vulnerable to the same security concerns to which internet voting is vulnerable. Consequently, the VEC considers telephone voting not to be practicable at this time.ConclusionInternet and telephone voting would solve the problems suggested in testing method 1, however, when testing method 2 is applied, difficulties become apparent from security concerns and low public confidence. Concerns may also be held about the secrecy of the ballot if voters have to provide personal details about themselves as well. Concerns could be somewhat mitigated if this option were applied in only a limited capacity (i.e. only for those whom only this solution would benefit – which is only those who have difficulty travelling to polling places and also difficulty with postal ballots).

4.3 Voting on computers at polling placesAn alternative way of providing computer voting would be through computer voting kiosks in polling places. This has been conducted (on at least a limited scale) in a number of countries (including Brazil, India, Japan, Kazakhstan, USA, UK and Venezuela) and more locally in the ACT. In the model used by voters in the last two ACT elections, voters used cut-down keyboards attached to PCs (or, in one voting centre in the 2004 election, attached to specially-designed voting machines) inside modified cardboard voting booths to make their selections, and the data were stored and counted electronically with no paper trail. An initial screen provided voters with a selection of languages for instructions to appear in. Rather than typing in a number next to each candidate, voters used the keypad to navigate around the screen, selecting candidates in their order of preference. Voters were provided with a screen displaying all of their selections for confirmation before finally casting the vote. Multiple voting was prevented by voters having to swipe a one-use-only barcoded card to start the process, the cards being issued by polling place staff when voters’ names are

23 Pratchett (2002), p. 8.

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marked off the roll. Vision-impaired voters could wear a set of headphones which would “read” instructions and options to voters by playing pre-recorded sound files when options are highlighted.BenefitsVoting on computers at polling places would enable all of the benefits as outlined in Section 4.1. This option would also avoid the following problems associated with internet voting:

voters would not need to receive PINs by mail or install software;

the recording of who has voted could be completely separate to the recording of their vote;

it would be much harder (though not impossible24) for the system to be hacked/manipulated;

public confidence is likely to be higher (see below); and the risk of coercion would be minimised due to voting

taking place in monitored locations.This option lacks the advantage of providing access to people in remote locations (as is provided by internet voting), although this could be partly reduced by mobile voting booths and through placing voting machines in overseas embassies. Mobile voting booths would enable officials to take voting machines to places like nursing homes or remote rural areas, thereby enabling some people to vote who would find it difficult to make it to a polling place (and, in the case of nursing homes, people who are likely to have other disabilities such as vision and motor impairments as well), without compromising security.ConcernsThere remain issues with public confidence in such systems and security/accuracy concerns.Surveys suggest that people are more likely to trust this possibility than internet voting, though some surveys do indicate a substantial level of distrust in the system, perhaps partly due to the difficulties in the US:

in one US survey in 2004, only 68% had trust in voting machines;25

in another, 42% were concerned about potential vote tampering and 38% were worried about the accuracy of the vote counting.26

24 see, for example, Kohno et al. (2004).25 Newkirk (2004), p. 5; American Association of People with Disabilities (2004).26 FindLaw (2004).

21

However, exit polls of 13,660 people at the 2004 US election indicated that 87% of Americans were confident that their votes would be counted accurately.27

In addition to public concern, there have been a number of problems actually encountered in practice from the use of electronic voting machines in the USA and elsewhere. Some problems have been significant enough to reverse results. Problems encountered include:28

machines breaking down, often taking hours to repair; 4,438 votes were lost in one North Carolina County in

2004, and 6,300 votes were lost in one Alabama general election in 2002;

machines in a number of states were caught double-counting votes;

one machine gave a candidate 3,893 more votes than were cast; and

some machines have recorded a different candidate to the one selected by the voter or have made it difficult to select particular candidates.

VerificationOne solution that would mitigate these concerns is voter verification. This can take two forms – electronic voter verification and voter-verified paper trails. In addition to reducing the risk of tampering, voter verification may also increase public confidence by allowing voters to check the accuracy of the system for themselves.Some companies29 offering electronic voting solutions offer the option that voters can verify the accuracy of the entire vote-casting and vote-counting process for their particular votes. As VoteHere explains, “We recognize that securing computers is impossible, so instead of forcing voters to trust election systems we empower individual voters, election watchdogs, and election officials to verify election results and to trace the source of mistakes or cheating.”30 Voters are issued with encrypted receipts with which they can verify not only that their vote was recorded correctly, but also that it was counted

27 CNN.com (2004). Similar results were obtained in exit-polls in Japan when electronic voting was first introduced – The Yomiuri Shimbun (2002), cf. Kyodo News Service (2002).28 See Associated Press (4/11/2004); Associated Press (5/11/2004); CBS Broadcasting (2004); Deutsche Presse-Agentur (2004); Dill et al. (2003-4); Elections ACT (2002), p. 10; Evan (2004), pp. 174f.; Financial Times Information (2002); Financial Times Information (2004); Larsen (1999); Mooney (2004); The Yomiuri Shimbun (2004); Zetter (2004) for these and further examples.29 e.g. VoteHere (2004), Scytl (2003).30 VoteHere (2004), p. 4.

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correctly (which no other system can do), over an internet connection or telephone after the election.This system would provide a high likelihood of detecting tampering. For example, Scytl suggests that in an electorate with 40,000 ballots, in which 1% of the ballots have been tampered with – if 230 voters verify their vote, there is a 90% chance of detecting the tampering; if 800 voters verify their vote, there is a 99.9% chance of detecting the tampering.31

Assuming all votes are recorded and counted correctly, this could go some way to allaying public concerns. It may also take some incentive out of attempting to breach security. However, relying on this method of verification leaves open the possibility that large scale tampering may not be detected until some time after the fact, which could seriously undermine voter confidence and necessitate a re-election.The other form of voter verification is a paper trail. There has been some push for this from groups in the USA.32 With this system, electronic voting machines print paper ballots, which the voter can check at the time of voting to ensure that the ballot indicates the voter’s preferences correctly. There are then three possible options for counting the votes:

the ballots could be counted in the same way as traditional ballot papers;

the voting machines could tally the votes, with the printed ballots stored separately as a backup to be counted if there is a challenge (or as a way of checking the electronic count); or

the ballots could be counted by separate counting machines (either during voting or after the close of polls).

Having separate voting and counting machines eliminates the possibility of a machine displaying (on screen and in print-out) a ballot one way but then counting it differently. Computer-printed ballots have the advantage of being more accurately read by a machine than marks made by voters (written or otherwise), making automated vote scanning (see Section 4.4) more appealing. Ballot papers could be fed into machines while the election is in progress so that results could be known almost as quickly as with internet voting or with voting machines that also count votes. Some have suggested that voters themselves should feed the ballots into the machine to make sure that the vote has been read successfully, with the machine indicating if a vote is informal, giving the voter the chance to rectify it. However, this could embarrass deliberately informal voters and

31 Scytl (2003), p. 11.32 See, for example, the Verified Voting Foundation (http://www.verifiedvoting.org).

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could compromise secrecy if there is a problem with the counting machine (e.g. a paper jam).Because there would be a paper trail, any electronic count could be verified by a human count, should there be concerns about counting machine malfunctions or tampering. This is likely to increase public confidence substantially.There are, however, some practical concerns with printing ballots or receipts:

one of the main advantages of introducing electronic voting would be to provide secret voting for voters who cannot currently vote without assistance – a large portion of this group is the vision-impaired, who may find it difficult to visually verify a printed ballot;

most voters are likely to be reluctant to thoroughly check the printed ballots, which would defeat the purpose – however, the same statistics apply to this technique of verification as those provided above by Scytl, meaning that there would be a 99.9% probability of detecting fraud to 1% of the ballots if 5% of the voters checked their votes;

printing equipment is one of the most likely piece of electronic equipment to have problems, such as machine malfunction, ink running out, paper running out, paper jamming or not printing part of the text;

if a problem occurs when a ballot is half-printed (e.g. paper jam) and the voter had to call on polling place staff, secrecy could be lost;

it would take longer to vote (even if there are no equipment problems) than at present; and

printers would add to the cost and labour requirements.Elections ACT felt no need for voter verification in conducting the ACT elections. The main safeguard that their system included against voting machine recording errors was machine verification. The voting machines registered both the voters’ preferences as recorded by the software and the voters’ keystrokes. When the voter submitted his or her vote, the server instantly compared the preferences with the keystroke record to make sure that the preferences matched what should result from the keystrokes. If a discrepancy were to arise, then the voter would see an error message and could take steps to ensure that he or she had the opportunity for a correctly-recorded vote. The VEC considers this a substantial check against possible machine malfunction.Costs

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If computer voting kiosks replaced all paper voting, the cost of providing sufficient hardware to all polling places and a service contract for equipment support on polling day would be vast. It should be noted that there are far larger distances and significantly more remote populations in Victoria than in the ACT.For most voters, the amount of effort required to vote would not be reduced, and the only real advantage over the current system would be the reduction of accidental informal voting. But for those voters who experience the problems identified in Section 3.1, the benefits would be substantial. In order to achieve these benefits for most members of these groups, however, it would not be necessary to replace all current voting with voting on computer terminals. The benefits could be provided to members of these groups by offering computer voting at selected pre-poll and election day voting centres, with information campaigns targeting these groups.For the 2006 State election, the VEC will be establishing a small number of “super voting centres” in Melbourne and regional Victoria. These centres will be specifically set up for people with disabilities – they will be fully accessible, have equipment to assist people with voting (such as magnifiers, special lighting, closed-circuit TVs) and specially-trained staff. These will be open throughout the pre-polling period and on polling day.The VEC believes that computer voting kiosks would be a useful option for voters in these centres. The VEC intends to conduct further investigations into the most appropriate model, but its initial investigations suggest that something similar to the system used at the ACT elections might be most appropriate.33

Information about these centres and the computer voting kiosks could be targeted at voters with disabilities and voters with poor English language skills, and the facilities would be conducive to disabled voters. Because the centres would be open for the entire pre-poll period as well as on election day, a substantial number of votes could be cast using this system without large number of computers being required, and the opportunities for voters to use the equipment would be maximised. The VEC considers that this option would maximise the value of computer voting whilst keeping costs at a reasonable level.By introducing computer voting on a smaller scale like this, it would also be possible to build voter confidence in the system. Such confidence would be useful should it become more practicable or desirable to expand the offering of computer kiosk voting in the future.Conclusion

33 See p. 20, or, for more details, see Elections ACT (2002), pp. 29ff.

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For most voters, this option provides little benefit over the current system, not sufficient to outweigh the costs. Consequently, the wholesale replacement of the current arrangements seems unwarranted at this stage.However, this option has the potential to solve a number of problems for certain voters, and the VEC consequently considers it worth pursuing on a limited scale. There are a number of options for reducing security concerns and building public confidence.The VEC plans to establish a small number of “super voting centres” throughout Victoria at the next State election. These centres will provide maximum access and services, and the VEC considers that computer voting kiosks might be used effectively at these centres, targeted specifically at people with certain disabilities and people with poor English language skills. The VEC intends to further investigate the feasibility of trialling such kiosks at the 2006 election.Because the VEC considers one of the major advantages of introducing computer voting to be the provision of a secret ballot to voters with visual and motor impairments, it considers a voter-verified paper trail an impractical solution to security concerns. Vision-impaired voters who have difficulty filling out a ballot at present would have difficulty verifying a print-out, especially as the printout may have to be smaller than a regular ballot in order to fit it onto an A4 page so as to avoid the need for customised printing equipment. The VEC also considers the possibility of printer malfunctions likely to compromise the secrecy of the ballot. Furthermore, the VEC is mindful that the process of voting by computer should not become more complex for voters with visual and motor impairments than the current arrangements, lest the value of computer voting be lost. Requiring voters to load ballots into printers, tear off receipt-like ballots or complete other such actions may be just as impossible for such people to do unaided as voting by pencil on paper.Consequently, the VEC considers that the best option would be for votes at computer kiosks to be cast, verified and counted electronically. In order for this to be possible, the VEC notes the need for changes to legislation. The VEC has recommended that the government consider enabling legislation so that this may be trialled at the 2006 election.The VEC also considers that maximum value will be derived from computer voting if it is offered to voters with poor English language skills. To save costs by requiring fewer machines, the VEC considers it most practical for these voters to be allowed to vote at any time over the pre-poll period. The VEC notes that this would also require legislative change. The VEC has recently

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recommended to government that voters be permitted to vote before election day as of right, which would allow this possibility.

4.4 Automated vote scanningAt present, there are two techniques for counting votes employed by the VEC. Preferences can be manually input into computers, which then tally votes, distribute preferences and determine which candidates are successful (see Section 2.4). Alternatively, votes can be sorted by hand and then counted using a counting machine. If a candidate is eliminated, the votes are then re-sorted by hand and recounted and this is repeated until all vacancies are filled.An alternative to this would be for ballots to be fed into a scanner, which could read the ballot and then tally the votes, distribute the preferences etc. There are a number of ways that this could be done:

ballots could be changed (e.g. to punch cards, to ovals beside names which voters shade) to make it easier for the machines to read using optical mark recognition;

machines could read computer-created ballots; or machines could read traditional ballots using optical

character recognition.With any system, there would be a number of valid ballots that could not be read by the machine and would have to be input manually. Computer-created ballots are least likely to experience this and traditional hand-written ballots most likely. Altering the ballots to punch cards or shading ovals as is done in the USA, however, would not be appropriate in Victoria due to the preferential voting system. Either of these options used with preferential voting would result in ballots with large matrices that would be quite confusing for voters. With as few as nine candidates, it would be prohibitively confusing, e.g.:

Preference: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9Candidate 1

Candidate 2

Candidate 3

Candidate 4

Candidate 5

Candidate 6

Candidate 7

Candidate 8

Candidate 9

Some electorates have many more than nine candidates, which would make this system completely impractical.However, the other two options would be practicable. Issues associated with computers creating ballots have been discussed in Section 4.3.

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With respect to scanning hand-written traditional ballots, however, some consideration is already being given to the use of optical character recognition software. Vote scanning technology was successfully used for local government elections in New Zealand in October 2004 to count 400,000 votes. The system used there was successful, and the accuracy of the machines has even survived legal challenge. The machine automatically imports the voters’ preferences into its database, but also provides an image of the ballot on a screen next to the data as it has read it, so that a human operator can verify that the machine has read the ballot correctly. By using this technology, the electoral authority was able to use half as many casual staff and half as much IT equipment (excluding scanners) than in previous elections. Results were also known sooner than in the past.The Australian Electoral Commission is currently undertaking a feasibility study of this possibility. The VEC considers that this technology could provide substantial cost savings. From the next State election, voters for the Legislative Council will be able to vote “above the line” or “below the line”. Data entering below the line preferences (see Section 2.4) would be very time consuming and is likely to be prone to error, as voting will be optional preferential (therefore, most ballots are likely to contain a substantial number of blank spaces). In contrast, automated scanning would be more accurate (for those that it successfully reads) and substantially faster (it takes approximately five minutes for a person to enter the data from a federal Upper House ballot into a computer using the Australian Electoral Commission’s software; the automated scanning machines used in New Zealand processed 120 double-sided A3 ballots per minute).There would be a large cost involved in providing the scanners (the models used in New Zealand cost $120,000 each) and a service contract for equipment support on polling day. However, this cost may be partly/largely offset by the reduction in the number of people required to enter data. In addition, results would be known in a more timely manner, fulfilling one of our aims as set out in Section 3.2. Therefore, the VEC considers this an option worth pursuit, subject to the findings of the AEC.

4.5 Voters adding themselves to the electoral register and modifying their details via the internetAt present, the electoral register is a digital database, and voters have the ability to check their details online (see Section 2.1). However, to add themselves to the register for the first time, or to update details, voters need to fill out a paper form and then post or deliver that to the VEC or Australian Electoral Commission.

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An alternative would be for voters to be able to fill out a form online. This would have a number of advantages from an operational perspective:

electors’ details would no longer need to be typed in by VEC/AEC staff, thereby reducing cost;

people may consider it easier and therefore be more likely to update their enrolment;

it may speed up the time taken to process changes (at present, it can take up to three weeks between sending in a form and receiving an acknowledgement); and

electorate details and other details (e.g. polling places if close to election time) could be provided to people instantly when they enrol or change their details.

The primary concern with this option would be the possibility of large numbers of people being fraudulently added to the register. Under the present system, a person or group would have to fill out large numbers of forms by hand to register a large number of electors, and the forms would provide a paper trail that may be helpful in identifying the people attempting to commit fraud. It would require less work to add non-existent names to the register via the internet and be less traceable.34

The extent of electoral fraud is Australia is extremely limited, and generally related to attempts to defraud other organisations rather than attempts to fix elections.35 However, it should be recognised that the current arrangements are open to fraud in a number of ways, and that federal parliament has recently passed legislation tightening the proof of identity requirements when enrolling, whereas this option could be seen to be loosening them.36 ConclusionAlthough allowing people to add themselves to the register and update their details online would have operational benefits, it would not contribute substantially to reducing identified problems or bringing us closer to our goals. It would also be a move in the opposite direction to federal legislation and the recommendations of the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters to make it harder for people to enrol.

4.6 Provision of candidate policy information by the VECAt present, the VEC produces and sends a booklet with candidate policy information to electors in local government

34 See further Jones (2000), Appendix A, pp. 9-13.35 Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (2001), pp. 15-19.36 Electoral and Referendum Amendment (Enrolment and Other Measures) Bill 2004. Cf. Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (1997), pp. 5-14; idem (2001), pp. 40-45.

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postal elections, as is required by the Local Government Act 1989. Candidates write their own statements, but may not exceed 150 words. The VEC corrects spelling errors and will remove any statements that breech any laws (such as libel) or anything misleading in terms of the Electoral Act 2002. Prior to 2004, the VEC also provided these statements on its website, but received legal advice indicating that this may not be permitted and consequently discontinued the practice.Electoral commissions in a number of other countries provide candidate statements online, and some also provide web forums, in which voters may ask candidates questions and in which general debate may take place.37 This may provide easier access to candidates for voters, particularly for voters in more remote places or with limited mobility. In terms of our goals, it also has the potential to assist voters in voting more knowledgably.However, the VEC considers that its role in independently conducting elections should not be blurred by having some responsibility for providing candidates’ and parties’ policy information to voters. It is essential that impartiality be maintained in the conduct of elections and that this impartiality be clear to the public. For this reason, the VEC is hesitant to expand further into providing candidate information. The more candidate information provided by the VEC, the greater the risk of confusion in the public mind between the candidate and the VEC, and the greater the risk to the VEC’s perceived impartiality in the conduct of elections.For example, if web forums were provided by the VEC for candidates to discuss issues with electors, it is likely that some independent candidates or candidates from minor parties would monitor the forums infrequently or not at all. In contrast, candidates from major parties would have the resources to have lively discussions with regular monitoring of the website. If the introduction of these forums were a VEC-initiated project, then it could be seen that the VEC is favouring major parties. Even if the project were initiated by government, but administered by the VEC, the VEC could be seen to be providing services that favoured some candidates over others.ConclusionSuch possibilities make the VEC reluctant to increase its role in providing candidate policy information. Certainly, to avoid any suggestions of partiality, the VEC considers it essential that it provide no more services with respect to publishing candidate policy information than are set by legislation.

37 E.g. the Municipality of Ronneby, Sweden.

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5 ConclusionsBased on the above analyses, the VEC has reached the following conclusions:

there are currently significant security concerns with internet voting and low public confidence in it and, until these are resolved, internet voting should not be pursued other than on a very limited and controlled scale (e.g. for Antarctic voters);

computer voting kiosks at polling places would provide many benefits for people with various disabilities and for people with poor English, while avoiding substantial concern about security;

the VEC intends to explore the possibility of developing a prototype computer voting kiosk to be trialled on a limited scale in selected pre-poll and election day voting centres at the next State election;o the VEC considers that the most benefit would come

from targeting this trial at voters with disabilities and voters with poor English language skills;

o the paper printing of ballots for verification by voters would not be appropriate in this situation, particularly as one of the main groups at which computer voting would be targeted would be the vision-impaired;

o such a trial would be subject to:1. legislation enabling the electronic recording of votes

at selected pre-poll and election day voting centres (the VEC has recommended that government consider enabling legislation providing for this);

2. legislative change allowing early voting as of right (which the VEC has recommended to government already);

3. the outcomes of a feasibility study to be undertaken by the VEC; and

4. the provision of sufficient funds. automated vote scanning by optical character recognition

should be pursued if favourable results come from the AEC’s feasibility study of this facility;

the benefits of allowing people to modify their details on the electoral register online or enrol to vote online do not outweigh the potential risks; and

the VEC should not take on an increased role of providing candidate policy information.

6 References

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American Association of People with Disabilities (2004), “Americans Indicate General Trust in Computerized Voting Systems’ Accuracy and Confidentiality” News Release 16/12/2004 (http://www.aapd.com/dvpmain/votemachines/trustcompvote.html).Associated Press (4/11/2004), “Computer Loses 4,500 Votes in N.C.”.Associated Press (5/11/2004), “Machine Error Gives Bush Extra Ohio Votes”.Barry, Colin, Paul Dacey, Tim Pickering and Debra Byrne (2001), Electronic Voting and Electronic Counting of Votes: A Status Report (http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/what/voting/electronic_report/index.htm).Barry, Colin, Paul Dacey, Tim Pickering and Tim Evans (2002), eVolution not Revolution: Electronic Voting Status Report 2 (http://www.aec.gov.au/_content/what/voting/E-voting%20report.pdf).CBS Broadcasting (2004), “Electronic Voting Causing Concern” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/03/eveningnews/main591185.shtml).Chen, Peter, Winsome Roberts and Rachel Gibson (2002), Submission to the Inquiry into Electronic Democracy (http://eprints.unimelb.edu.au/archive/00000183/).CNN.com (2004), “Election Results” (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html).Deutsche Presse-Agentur (2004), “Roundup: India’s Mammoth Three-Week Election Exercise Ends” (May 10, 2004).Dill, David L., Rebecca Mercuri, Peter G. Neumann and Dan S. Wallach (2003-4), “Frequently Asked Questions about DRE Voting Systems” (http://www.verifiedvoting.org/article.php?id=5018)Elections ACT (2002), The 2001 ACT Legislative Assembly Election: Electronic Voting and Counting System Review (http://www.elections.act.gov.au/adobe/2001ElectionReviewComputerVoting.pdf).The Electoral Commission (2002), Modernising Elections: A Strategic Evaluation of the 2002 Electoral Pilot Schemes (http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/about-us/02pilotscheme.cfm).Evan, William M. (2004), “Voting Technology, Political Institutions, Legal Institutions and Civil Society: A Study of the Hypothesis of Cultural Lag in Reverse”, History and Technology 20:2, pp. 165-183.Fielding, Phil (2004), “Poll of Disabled Voters”, Progress Leader 22/11/2004, p. 12.

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34

TABLE 1: SUMMARY OF THE ANALYSIS OF ELECTRONIC OPTIONS IN SECTION 4

mov

emen

t w

ith r

espe

ct t

o go

als

(mar

ks o

f a h

ealth

y de

moc

racy

)

estimated public

confidence in results de

crea

sed

inte

r-m

edia

te

no

chan

ge

decr

ease

d n/a

1 un

less

vot

ers f

eed

the

ballo

ts in

to th

e co

untin

g m

achi

nes t

hem

selv

es (s

ee p

. 23.

).

security/accuracy

pote

ntia

l su

bsta

ntia

l po

tent

ial

smal

l de

crea

sepo

tent

ial

smal

l de

crea

se

decr

ease

d no

chan

ge

speed with which results

are known

incr

ease

d

incr

ease

d

incr

ease

d

no c

hang

e

no c

hang

e

voters’ knowledge

in voting

incr

ease

d

incr

ease

d

no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

incr

ease

dfreedom from

coercion

decr

ease

d no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

access to voting

incr

ease

d

incr

ease

d no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

no

chan

ge

redu

ces

prob

lem

difficulties for people in

remote locations

difficulties from poor English

language skills

accidental informal voting

1

poor access to voting/secret

voting for disabled people

35

Opt

ion

inte

rnet

/tele

phon

e vo

ting

(§ 4

.2)

com

pute

r kio

sk

votin

g at

poll

ing

plac

es (§

4.3

)au

tom

ated

vot

e sc

anni

ng (§

4.4

)

vote

rs a

ddin

g th

emse

lves t

o th

e el

ecto

ral r

egist

er

and

chan

ging

thei

r VE

C pr

ovid

ing

cand

idat

e po

licy

info

rmat

ion

onlin

e

36