e-Voting

e-voting is a relatively new concept developed to complement the traditional methods of voting, notably polling stations, and voting by postal mail. There are several e-voting solutions on the market which cover a broad range of systems from electronic ballot reading devices, to electronic ballot boxes installed in polling stations, activated by buttons or touch screens, mobile phone voting systems and remote voting via the Internet.

Governments taking advantage of e-voting are often make voting more convenient for the voter, emphasise the direct democracy process, and increase voter participation. It also provides an opportunity for the citizens of a country living outside of country to take part in the elections taking place in their country, and it may enable the disabled who live in that country to participate in the voting process.

While e-Voting solutions being developed by the computer and software are being introduced by many governments and states in different parts of the world, Switzerland is often recognised as the world leader in the field of remote Internet e-voting solutions, having successfully deployed one of the first legally binding remote internet voting solutions.

E-Voting in the Canton of Geneva

In the case of the State of Geneva, the e-voting system was introduced by the Chancellor of the State of Geneva in collaboration with two private companies located in Geneva, namely, Hewlett-Packard and WISeKey. This public-private sector partnership was needed in order to develop a solution compatible with the Swiss voting habits and legal constraints. WISeKey played a crucial role in security of the e-voting system in the State of Geneva. The objective was to guarantee the secrecy of voting and to make sure that votes are not intercepted, modified, nor diverted, and to ensure that many other conditions of secrecy were fulfilled, such as:

• ensuring that each voter can vote only once;
• restricting e-voting access to registered voters;
• allowing access to the system only during the voting period, from the official opening to the official closing of the e-Ballot box;
• ensuring that the ballot box can only be counted in the presence of the minimum quorum of electoral representatives;
• and many others.

Appropriate measures are taken to avoid illegal opening of the e-Ballot box, safety measures are provided to ensure that no bias has been introduced by the system and that there are no lost votes. These logistics are essential to guarantee the secrecy and effectiveness of the e-voting system.

In addition to procedural security measures, many technical security measures should also be taken care of. This includes measures to make it difficult for hackers to read secret data, site certification, proper filing of voters’ identity and ballots in two distinct files, etc.

One of the major aims of the e-voting system was not to require additional features or software to be installed on the voter’s computer. In the Geneva e-Voting system each voter receives a voting card that contains a personal identification number (PIN). Of course, the PIN has to be changed for each ballot.

Only an standard security enabled Internet web browser is required. As soon as the registered voter enters his card number he will establish a secure connection. Once recognized by the system as an authorized voter, he is sent an e-ballot paper through a secure server to complete. Once the voting has been completed, the system can also confirm that it has recorded the vote and give the date and time of the recording.

The Swiss experiment with e-voting indicated that about 30 percent of the Swiss people would like to vote online; a figure that has been forecasted for the long run. Surveys and feedback noted that novelty, simplicity, and convenience were the main reasons for voting online. The simplicity of the application was confirmed by the low number of calls on the helpline during the voting process.

The success of the e-voting project in Geneva, prompted the Swiss Federal Government to continue this experiment at the federal level. WISeKey continues its partnership with the State of Geneva, performing critical secure software development, and delivering sensitive security services such as key generation and DigitalID management for each election.

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