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Why has internet voting not been arranged?
Internet voting usually means that voters could vote anywhere, e.g. at home or at work, via the internet.
However, voting without the supervision of election authorities is problematic in many ways. At least the following questions relating to the central principles of holding elections must be considered:
- How can the election secrecy of the voter be ensured, if someone else is able to see who he or she votes for?
- How can free elections be ensured, if someone else may be able to force the voter to vote in a certain way?
- How can the equal right to vote be ensured, if the voter may surrender his or her right to vote to someone else, for instance, because he or she is not interested in the election?
- How can selling and buying votes be prevented?
- How can the principle of equal treatment be achieved, if it can not be ensured that everyone has access to the necessary technical equipment or know how to use it? Would it be fair that young people could vote at home and older people would have to go to the polling station?
There are no good answers to these questions yet.
In principle internet voting could be arranged technically, even though possible malware in home computers might cause some information security problems. However, arranging internet voting would require a large scale introduction of the electronic ID card or other corresponding identification method.