Electronic Australian Elections: Verifiability of Accuracy is a Design Goal, which Must be Mandated by Law and Deliberately Designed into Electronic Electoral Processes

Abstract

Electronic voting and counting are increasingly common and have been adopted in a number of Australian jurisdictions. Unfortunately, there is evidence that e-voting systems lack transparency. At present there are reasonable solutions for poll-site e-voting but none for remote paperless Internet voting. Although there are reasonable methods for statistical audits of electronically counted election results, Australian elections do not use them. The authors argue that a purposive approach should be taken to relevant electoral laws to ensure that genuine scrutiny of electronic electoral processes can be undertaken. This would require the source code and the voting data to be made available for testing. The authors recommend a number of legislative reforms to ensure the verifiability of e-voting. These reforms need to be undertaken to ensure that Australian elections are accurate, and consistent with the constitutional requirement of direct choice by electors.