Governments and electorates are grappling with how to embrace the digital age and its benefits while maintaining integrity, legitimacy and ensuring infallible democracies in the world. The Atlantic Council believes that technology's forward march in the election is inevitable and its use in the voting process will accelerate. "Our role as a policy think tank is to ask how best to ensure that implementation in countries large and small to enhances accessibility, expands participation, and strengthens democracy’s credibility".
- Will the electorates believe the outcome of an election conducted through online?
- And will politicians accept the outcome of such result?
Growing pressure to embrace new technology that finding a suitable solution is a challenging for lawmakers and election officials. In some instances, new technology is envisioned as part of a long-range plan for improving efficiency and communication, streamlining program delivery, integrating various systems, lowering costs of operation and minimizing manpower requirements.
Despite an impressive list of benefits, electronic voting hasn't seen wider implementation.
There is an overriding consensus that voting systems must be reliable, accurate, secure, and meet established performance standards. Yet disagreement emerges among legal members and politicians regarding the perceptions of the strengths and vulnerabilities of an electronic voting system as compared with traditional paper ballot voting, and therefore those weights are basing on multiple criteria for evaluation are: - Accuracy of the count.
- A speed of ballot tabulation.
- Auditability.
- Transparency.
- Ballot security (including susceptibility to fraud or spoilage);
- Voter convenience.
- Equipment costs.
- Accessibility for all voters, including those away from the region, those with disabilities, and multilingual considerations are all factors impacting the decision.