Featured article: Securing e-voting as a legitimate option for e-governance

Securing e-voting as a legitimate option for e-governance
Alan D. Smith, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, USA
Electronic Government, an International Journal 4(3) 2007, 269 - 289
The constant change of technology has put increased pressure on e-governance initiatives to modernise its election process to keep pace with e-commerce activities. After several national elections, many citizens have noticed first hand the numerous voter irregularities that included long lines, hanging chads, and other polling problems as many countries rush to update their aging and out-dated voter machines and traditional forms of capturing and identifying voters' information. Although e-voting could gradually lead to a smoother, electoral process, citizens and politicians must not assume electronic machines are cure-alls to the traditional ballot crisis. Since e-voting entails plugging votes across a network into a central IT-infrastructure, security and privacy concerns become increasingly imminent. This paper focuses on such e-governance initiatives and what steps election officials could take to ensure its elections via e-voting are secure through a cost/benefit analysis.