Citizenship in the Age of Internet - Essay Example

ANSWER This paper reports on the success factors and the failures that have faced the electronic voting system in Switzerland since its inception in 2004. Because of its simplicity and transparency, the World Wide Web has not only gained wide acceptance amongst the academicians but it has also become a part of our daily lives. Although its impact in the society is not fully felt, it is fully rooted in the places of work. In the political world, it is a popular and democratic tool. We are first going to look at the successes and later we shall look at the challenges, which have made it fail at some point (Chevallie, p 24-30, 2006). The first and most important benefit of e-voting in Switzerland is that it has raised the number of voters who participated in the recent past elections compared to those who were participating in the earlier elections when the postal voting system was used. E voting has encouraged the young people to participate in the elections due to its simplicity and time saving nature. Another factor that has led to an increase in the voters’ turnout is the facts that the e voting did not replace the other channels of voting like postal voting – those uncomfortable with e voting have an option of using the old methods. In addition, the Swiss who live abroad can now participate in the polls from wherever they are and the handicapped do not have to travel to the postal offices to cast their votes. This voting system is more successful in big cities like Geneva where the pilot projects were carried out. Moreover, e voting reaches the voters from their home and the voting is faster than the traditional methods. There are also possibilities of having several elections in a year and e voting could entice voters to participate in every election. Since its introduction, e voting in Switzerland has received much support from the citizens who more than 74% use the internet and one in every three uses the internet daily. Another advantage of e voting system is the quality of votes. Most of the voters use the internet to access the information they require. This helps them to make informed decisions on the candidates and the electoral process. E-government is another important development in the technological world and it has come to be associated with the word, ‘Information Technology’ in European countries. In e-government, most of the government services are online and the government communicates with the citizens through the internet. On the other hand, the internet media is well developed and people can easily access the information they require from the internet (Michael, p11- 27, 2005). Furthermore, e voting is accurate in counting of votes. It usually eliminates the risks of human errors since the votes are counted electronically; theoretically, this is always correct (garbage in garbage out). This has raised the legitimacy of the votes and enhanced democracy and economic efficiency in Switzerland. There is no basis for candidates to raise complaints on the issues of the security of their votes. The use of computer system minimizes malpractices among the election officials. There is little possibility of having spoilt votes since the voters have to confirm their choice before the computer system can proceed to accept the choice. Additionally, electronic voting in Switzerland brought efficiency and convenience to the voters. Most people have computers in their houses and offices. For those who could not access the internet, they could use their mobile phones to send short messages. In today’s world, time is an important and scarce resource and most people are having tight daily schedules. To accommodate them, the e voting, that is, stress free system, which incorporates friendly and enhanced features, ensures that they vote from wherever they are. To vote in this system, one needs around a minute. One minute, to cast a vote is worth the sacrifice and most people can forego it (Chevallie, para 4-6, 2006). A number of challenges that the government has faced all along since the introduction of e voting in 2004 as a pilot project in Geneva, cause the failure story of e voting in Switzerland. In the period between January 2003 and April 2005, up to 90, 000 citizens from Geneva were invited to participate in eight official elections. This was used as a test of e voting system, which was meant to complement the traditional methods of voting. The first challenge was the general fear from the population that it could divide the society in two parts. The part of the population that could enjoy the convenience, simplicity and all other advantages linked with it and the other section that felt they were being sidelined in the electoral process, which is a democratic right. The biggest challenge was from the old people who felt that IT was for the young and that they had nothing to do with it and that it should not be a national issue. Although the fear was uncalled for, the government had to conduct public awareness campaigns to remove the fears. Confidentiality of the ballot is another challenge that e voting faces in Switzerland. Voters have to log in with their identity, personal data and the ballot have to be kept strictly separate in order to secure confidentiality. If someone accesses the ballot and personal data or the voter keeps the two of them together, his/her confidentiality is compromised. Although such instances are rare, many experts argue that it is possible for hackers to penetrate the IT systems and access this important data. Any e voting system must be secure from all forms of vote manipulation. There are usually no signatures used during the voting and therefore, cases of voters not actually being the persons they claimed to be are many (Geser, p 198, 2002). Experts from multiple disciplines composing legal, computer science specialists, political, PR, security with strong support from the government took part in developing the system, but this could not eliminate security problems that are related with Web services that pose a big challenge to the effective implementation of e voting in Switzerland. These challenges may include, web spoofing, misuse, abuse or the system failure and challenge of supporting the diverse software, hardware and the browsers that people use in casting their votes. Although Switzerland is among the few countries with a highly developed information technology platform and among the first one to implement fully e voting, she still has to work towards improving the system to cooperate more security features to avoid any compromise of the electoral system (Dimitris, p 112, 2003). Computer threats like hackers, Trojan horses and viruses are normally significantly responsible for the mistrust in the digital environment. They affect data in the computer and the results are not the intended or there may be no result at all. Voters are not sure whether the system counts their votes or whether they are lost in the process. Lack of transparency is another concern of the voters in Switzerland since they feel that all the procedures of data generation, transformation and storage take place in opaque boxes that are not transparent and even the computer experts could not be able to confirm the accuracy of the whole process. This is normally a big threat to the acceptance of the votes since most people cannot confirm that the system was actually working correctly (Council of Europe, p145-150, 2005). In spite of its success, a section of the Swiss cannot access the technological facilities. This is especially in the rural areas where technological facilities are less developed. although the percentage is small, they should enjoy the same political rights as the rest. In some rural areas, voters still have to travel to the postal offices to cast their votes and therefore no potential increase in voters turn out is expected (Alkassar, p12, 2007). E voting involves dissemination of polling information by the election authorities. Political parties on the other hand make good use of the internet by advertising and propagating their messages at low cost. However, for users, this might result in information confusion about its origin and overload. The voters may not know the right sources to rely on and may fail to make the right judgment on the candidates. This makes the voters to filter the information and receive only the ones they want. The Swiss love traditional lifestyle of gathering in social groups in the evening to discuss political issues and as they take coffee in restaurant and social clubs, but e voting has led to low political discussion and voters’ interaction before the election. E voting therefore has a negative impact on the process of opinion formation. Most of the information is normally found in the internet and hence, people no longer have reasons to leave their homes and share their political views with others in order to gain more knowledge to inform their decisions. It is a controversy that e voting takes only a minute, which encourages casting of votes, deficit of much reflection and emotional attachment. Finally, in the old systems, people used to help in counting of votes manually and this to some extent added the feeling of connection and control of the system and the results. Candidates’ presence during the counting makes the votes more legitimate and acceptable. The voters feel the weight of their voting right when they are involved in the counting of the votes they cast but in e voting, computers with no human connection do the counting, which make the voting more unpopular with people. It is also very difficult for candidates to establish the basis of challenging the result because it is not possible to recount the votes. Once the machines report the results, there cannot be any different results (Chancellor, para 3, 2009) Concisely, the driving force to implement electronic voting in Switzerland was to increase the political participation of the inactive citizens by offering them an efficient and simple means of voting. In my opinion, these voters may increase the political errors in the elections by bringing wrong candidates in to power. On the other hand, E voting has raised the political participation rate for the 700,000 Swiss living abroad. This has risen four times from around 70,000 in 2002 to 300,000 in 2009. The number of handicapped people who participate in polls has also swollen and this has helped to development of an equal society in Switzerland. Although the number of inactive voters who participate in the elections has increased, the question is whether this is good or bad because this leads to more weight of low-rationality voters who are poorly informed and rather undecided. E voting has brought a revolution in the political world. Its advantages outweigh the disadvantages in Switzerland and therefore, the government should work on improving the system rather than going back to the traditional systems (Alexander, p250, 2005). References Alexander, H., (2005). ‘The European Union And E-Voting: Addressing The European Parliaments Internet Voting Challenge’. New York: Routledge. Alkassar & Volkamer, (2007).’Voting and identity: first international conference’. Bochum: Springer. Chancellor, D., (2009). ‘The Geneva Internet Voting System’. [Online] Available at: http://www.geneva.ch/chancellie/E-Government/e-voting.html (Accessed April 27, 2010). Chevallie, M. et el., (2006). ’Success Factors in Geneva’s e-voting system’. Electronic journal of e-government, Vol 4. Council of Europe, (2005). ’Making democracy work’. London: Council of Europe. Dimitris, G., (2003).’Secure electronic voting’. Bolzano: Springer Geser, H., (2002).’Evoting projects in Switzerland’. University of Zurich. [Online] Available at: http://socio.ch/intcom/t_hgeser12.htm#5.3.6 (Accessed April 27, 2010). Michael, H., (2005). ’E-government: towards electronic democracy’. Bolzano: Springer. Read More