Global S&T Development Trend Analysis Platform of Resources and Environment
Between transparency and confidentiality, is electronic voting viable? | |
admin | |
2021-04-25 | |
发布年 | 2021 |
语种 | 英语 |
国家 | 法国 |
领域 | 地球科学 ; 资源环境 |
正文(英文) |
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Transparent ballot boxes are reassuring for voters who can see their ballot fall and remain inside until votes are counted (municipal elections in Metz, northeastern France, in March 2018).
In France, where the first lockdown was imposed immediately following the initial round of the 2020 municipal elections, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought remote electronic voting back to the forefront. Stéphanie Delaune and Véronique Cortier, specialists in cryptographic issues, shed light on the scientific approach to e-voting.
What is electronic voting and how is it used in the world? Véronique Cortier:2 Practices vary widely from country to country, and voters usually have no idea how the proposed electronic voting systems operate. French citizens living in other countries can vote online for parliamentary and consular elections. But for the 2012 poll, no information was made public as to how those ballots were handled, even though some slivers of information can be surmised. And in fact, the experiment was not repeated in 2017: online voting for French nationals abroad was called off a few months before the election. The pioneer in the field is Estonia, whose population is issued an electronic identity card that provides much better authentication than the system of user names and passwords sent by regular post. Australia adopted e-voting a few years ago, with several hundred thousand electronic ballots. Switzerland is also a leader, especially because it holds multiple referenda every year, each time on several issues. Voting by mail is common practice, hence the will to switch from paper to virtual ballots. ![]()
What led you to study electronic voting? V.C.: It is in fact difficult to ensure both reliability and voter anonymity: how can one be certain that the result is correct, or that only qualified people have voted, without revealing who did and how? We consider that the conventional paper ballot offers an excellent compromise between these two properties, at least for large-scale national elections. This level has yet to be reached for electronic voting in France, where e-voting solutions are black boxes: people don’t know anything about the system being used and don’t even have proof that the servers have received their ballot. S.D.: This duality between anonymity and transparency complicates the situation. It’s an issue that must be addressed in order for electors to trust the final result. With paper voting, the boxes are transparent for a good reason: seeing their ballots fall inside is part of a ritual that helps reassure voters. What are the main obstacles for researchers in this field? S.D.: There is now a consensus on certain elements of security, such as what makes a good protocol for storing authentication keys. However, voting poses its own specific problems, resulting in definitions that are by no means absurd, but are limited. ![]() Since voting is not just about choosing government officials, what solutions are available for other types of elections? S.D.: Cryptography experts can even create their own verification codes if they don’t trust Belenios. In the short term, what possibilities and limitations would there be in France for electronic voting? Footnotes
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来源平台 | CNRS News |
文献类型 | 新闻 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.173/C666/handle/2XK7JSWQ/326440 |
专题 | 地球科学 资源环境科学 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | admin. Between transparency and confidentiality, is electronic voting viable?. 2021. |
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