The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF virtual intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> PAULO LARA: Welcome everyone who's joining. We should
start in three minutes. So thank you for being here.
Hi, everyone.
Should we start?
>> PAULO LARA: I guess so. Internet issues, I think that we
do -- didn't go as it should.
But in any case I'd like to welcome everyone. Thank you for
interest. Good morning, good afternoon, or good night, depending
where you are to everyone who's present on this session.
We hope everyone is fine, healthy, and in a good mood today.
My name is Paulo Lara. I'm head of the digital rights programme at
ARTICLE 19 Brazil, I'm a social scientist with a Ph.D. in politics
from the University of London.
And together with my fellow colleagues, Rafaela de Alcantara
and (?) We will coordinate this panel called Democracy and online
voting: challenges and innovations.
We thank the IGF for preparing and developing the event under
such complex conditions, and all of those who are interested in
attending and participating.
Initially I would like to quickly describe the format of the
session so everyone is aware. We will start with an initial round
of contribution of our speakers who will introduce the topic of
their work in five minutes.
After the first round we will have new additions of five
minutes from each of the guests to complement, comment, or add the
points that were presented so far.
This first stage will (audio distortion) center of this
information campaign that showed on many sides of the political
spectrum the lack of interest, knowledge, and study about the
relationship between technology and electoral process.
The digital and participatory political processes range from
the use of biometric registry, biotechnology for conference and use
of large databases to register candidates and political parties
until the structure for registering -- registry, transmitting,
counting votes.
Last year the Brazilian attorney voting machines were
questioned by large organisation of -- from the part of the far
right, President Bolsonaro, and his supporters, using evidence to
question the voting -- in a manner, this group sought to interfere
in the electoral process and to question the legitimacy of the
process at a time when the -- the president was losing popularity
and attacking democratic institutions and political opponents.
This massive campaign used disinformation practices and
polluted the legitimate debate on advances of improvements in
digital electronic security, in addition to suspending the
possibility of an open and democratic debate on the complexity of
Brazilian electoral process. In many cases responses to these
attacks coming from the opposition to the president also showed a
lack of understanding about technology, logistics, and legitimate
concerns about the current status of the alliance between
technology and democracy.
One of the responses by the Supreme Electoral Court was to
present the elaboration of a project to study the modernization and
transparency for Brazilian elections called "elections of the
future." This idea is still in construction, takes the
consideration the studies of adoption of votes over the Internet in
some cases.
As a way of contributing to the debate on the evolution of
voting technologies and participatory process, we propose this
panel to learn about, experience, and hear expert on this aspect,
knowing that the political and electoral processes are not limited
to the technicality of solutions but are presented as a social pact
that needs trust, legitimacy, and transparency our intention is to
address some aspects of the problems and novelties that arise in
this scenario.
So initially I would like to welcome you all and start our
debate with the contribution from Dr. Rodrigo Silva, expert advisor
at NIC.br. So welcome, everyone. And the floor is yours,
Dr. Rodrigo. Thanks a lot.
>> RODRIGO SILVA: Hi, everyone. Want to thank Paulo and his
staff for the invitation. I feel honoured to participate in this
workshop. It is privilege to share a moment with you. I'm
Rodrigo, an advisor to NIC.br, network center in Brazil, I'm
election server in Brazil especially in new vote technologies.
My first impressions of -- in democracy are that I believe in
the Internet vote process because it is an image topic. However, I
still very -- I still have a very conservative position in adopting
internet voting, especially in Brazil.
So let me explain my position, Brazilian case.
In Brazil the starting point of voting occurred in 1989,
election in (?) State. Using micro computer to collect votes.
It's an experiment and not project by the superior electoral
courts. Pay attention at this time because the issue of the
security is not exactly the main point, but the objective is to
speed up the process of totaling and disclosing the electoral
result.
The idea of the vote collector was adopt years out. It began
to improve it. In joining with superior electoral court, the?
Technology institute, and the national institute for spatial
research.
From this point onwards, the security of digital vote is
mandatory in the technology adopting electoral process.
So the first official voter elections occurred in 1996, by
election. Approximately it's 100 million voters, about 13 million
voted it through election ballot box.
Today of course the numbers are different than in 1996.
In 2020 the population comprised almost 200 million
Brazilians, of which 150 million are voters.
The country has 5,568 cities. And 492,000 voting places,
require almost 6,000 electronic vote machines. We can observe that
the Brazilian electoral process is a complex logistics.
And this is a problem because the security chain in voting
process is formidable to security breach. In this case the human
factor in the security chain of the e-voting system.
Throughout the elections questions arise about the security of
the electoral process by the academic community and the political
parties.
So we can see that in 25 years of the Brazilian vote system,
only four officials were public. And half them presented some
failure or vulnerability.
Between 2009 and 2014, there was an obligation for the public
test. The results of the 2012 were not well liked by the superior
electoral court because of the vulnerability founded in the source
code.
The superior electoral court has chosen not to conduct public
security testing of the e-vote system in 2012 and 2014.
According to the Brazilian government, there was an internal
test without the publicity of the results.
Only in 2016 by the resolution 23-44 and 2015 test became
mandatory.
Again, about public test, 2017, 2019, 2021, often presented
some feeling of vulnerability.
The current president of the superior electoral court and also
the project elections for the future, in 2020, to replace the vote
machines with the use of Internet e-voting and also the adoption of
blockchain and UOT technology for the next elections.
After two meetings with the project team, I can consider it's
my (?) Of course, as the pillars for the president of the superior
electoral courts to give up adopting Internet voting for the 2022
elections. However, the superior electoral court realis for the
first time that the adoption of new technology in electoral process
is necessary and imminent. And it adopts the election for the
future projects as a parallel improvement process without running
over the current 2020 vote system.
I understand that it is the right decision, as any digital
information in the government platform must reach a degree of
maturity before being fully implemented.
So I conclude my first impressions.
Thank you.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot, Dr. Rodrigo for this panorama of
Brazil. And now I give the floor to Florian Marcus from Estonia
bridging centre, a digital transformation advisor. So Florian, the
floor is yours. Thanks a lot for being here.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: Thank you so much for the invitation. Hi
to everybody. Greetings from Tallinn, at -17 degrees and snow
right now. Hope you're well. I want to tell you about the Estonia
experience. I-voting, we say i rather than e because this is not
about electronic ballots or anything of the like, it is that you
can vote through the computer that you have at your home or through
your laptop.
Since 2005 all elections have been conducted both on paper and
through the Internet, through personal computers. So whether
you're thinking about local elections or national elections, or
even European parliamentary election, also the European commission
has recognized our voting system for that. I want to give you a
very quick look at how it actually works.
So I will share my screen with you.
And so what you have to do is you have to download this
application which is obviously free provided by the government.
And you've got different ways of logging in. In Estonia, an
electronic identity is compulsory. So you can log in with your
I.D. card which looks like this. You can also log in with
something called mobile I.D. through your mobile phone, as the name
implies.
Going to enter a random phone number, this is obviously a demo
version. I would get a notification on my phone that says check
the control code, you get your PIN, this is obviously my real name
and real code. But click proceed and we will see all the different
animal parties that are running for the elections in the forest.
Let's take flying squirrels party and the European flying squirrel
as the candidate. Very good educational and tech policies.
So now we have are you sure that you want to vote for this
person from this party? And when you click on that vote button,
again you will get this control code and you have to enter it.
Says here as well, your PIN too. Which is what we call the legally
binding digital signature. When you enter this, the result is --
wait, I will stop sharing my screen for a second. The result is
this here.
And so you get this message, hey, you voted successfully. The
vote arrived at the voting server. There is a QR code where you
can check whether your vote the way you made it arrived unchanged
at the server. If there was any attempt to change your vote.
There was a notification that says hey if you feel like you were
coerced, if you feel like there was any sort of influence from
outside, you can change your vote.
In Estonia every election period is 10 days long. The first
seven days are digital. And so during those seven days you can
vote again and again and again. Obviously they don't count all of
the votes, they only count the last one. So you have that
flexibility and if you feel like during those seven days you were
always under pressure or under threat, you can still go vote on
paper on election day and your paper vote will cancel the digital
vote that you gave before.
This has -- I mean there are different ways that we can
discuss inclusivity. In the last European parliamentary elections
in 2019, 47.8% of all the votes that were cast were cast online.
We did not see online voting drastically increase the voter
participation rates. So it turns out if you want to vote, you
will. If you don't want to vote, you still will not.
Which is okay by our -- from our opinion.
And what we have seen is that we -- we appeal to different
groups more than to others with online voting. So contrary to
perhaps expectations that you have and we used to have, this is not
about all the young people, all the urbanites voting online. It's
actually quite -- I don't want to say the opposite but it's a much
more mixed picture. Especially the elderly, statistically
speaking, they live in more rural settings where the next polling
station is further away. Especially the elderly may have physical
impairments that keep them from going to the next polling station.
And also Estonia is a small country, 1.3 million people. And
we have around 35 embassies around the world. So if you live in
one of the countries that does not have an Estonia embassy, you're
out of luck. Right now the situation if you're an Estonian in
Latin America if there was an election to cast a vote through an
embassy, you would have to fly to Washington, D.C. and the truth is
people will not do that.
So online voting really especially for smaller countries, it
helps rekindle relationships with Estonians abroad as well as with
those that perhaps have trouble going to the physical polling
station. So yeah, that's just a very brief insight from Estonia,
looking forward to your questions and also the other presentations.
Thanks so much.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Florian, for this very interesting
presentation of the system. I think we all would like to hear a
bit more and we'll have time to do that.
Now I'll pass the floor to Meredith Applegate, who's a
consultant Sri Lanka information desk.
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Thank you so much. Thank you all the
organisers and my fellow panelists. My name is Meredith Applegate.
I'm a programme advisor for the international foundation for
electoral systems currently based in Columbo. So slightly warmer.
Sorry, Florian, than Estonia at the moment. I focus mostly on
inclusion and electoral access. And I was one of the co-authors of
IFIS cornerstone paper on voting. Follow a set of crucial
international principles like transparency, accountability and
inclusion. For the purpose of my remarks today I'll focus mostly
on this last principle, on the opportunities but also the
significant risks that Internet voting provides that could either
enable like Florian was talking about or actually deny the
meaningful participation of marginalized communities.
The UDHR, of Universal Declaration of Human Rights, requires
that elections are held under the principles of universal and equal
suffrage by secret vote. Article 29 on the UN convention on rights
of people with disabilities requires that voting procedures,
facilities, and materials are accessible and new technologies are
used when they're appropriate. And Article 7 on the convention on
the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women,
states that state parties must do everything they can to eliminate
discrimination against women in elections.
But importantly, all of these stress the importance of
secrecy, of nondiscrimination, and in the case of the CRPD,
explicitly state that voters have to be free from intimidation.
So Internet voting presents a really interesting tool in this
case for election management when it comes to inclusion and access.
So on the one hand, remote Internet voting, meaning voting
from a personal device outside of a polling station or a controlled
environment, potentially offers a range of really accessible
options that would benefit a number of groups.
So a remote voting Internet option could potentially provide
populations with difficulty accessing a polling station or
materials for any number of reasons, the ability to exercise their
right to vote. And these reasons could include climate,
connectability disability, logistical challenge, the cost of
traveling, or being part of a migrant diaspora population.
And there are also benefits around independence and privacy
when voters with disabilities in particular can vote from home. So
voters can use their own assistive device, like an adaptive
keyboard or software. Such as screen readers or voice recognition
to mark the ballot. Which is not necessarily available to them in
a polling station.
It's also important to note however that some of these
benefits also apply to more traditional absentee voting methods
such as mail-in ballots. And if Internet voting is being offered
as an option, while the polling station is still another option,
all of these options have to be accessible. So offering Internet
voting does not get you off the hook for making a polling station
accessible.
However, remote Internet voting where poll workers are not
present to control who enters a polling booth or whether or not
external officials available to intervene when an electoral
violation takes place can also have really devastating implications
for the secrecy of the vote and for individual enfranchisement
itself.
Violence against women has reached new heights under the
COVID-19 pandemic. A recent global study about UN women indicated
that 1 out of 4 women state that household conflicts have become
more frequent and that they feel more unsafe in their homes since
COVID-19. Women with disabilities and women with intersectional
identities are even more likely to face violence. And electoral
observers even in a traditional election at the polling station
struggle to report on gender-based electoral violence because so
much of it does not take place in public spheres.
And in a number of countries, family voting where a single
member of the family illegally casts votes on behalf of other
members of the family remains an issue.
So by removing voting from a controlled environment, those who
faced violence at home, violence being defined as physical,
psychological, or economic violence, may face any number of
scenarios that would impede their right to vote freely, secretly,
safely, or even at all.
An abusive partner could dictate how they cast their ballot.
A family member could pressure them to vote in a certain way.
Potentially with consequences if they do not.
And these consequences could be physical violence, deprivation
of finances or even a home, or the head of household could decide
that it's not right or necessary for any of their family members to
cast a vote at all. And deprive them of the use of potentially a
limited number of devices that are connected to the Internet.
Estonia actually does a really interesting job to mitigate this
coercion by counting only the last online ballot or allowing you to
go to the polling station to have your vote -- your final vote is
the only one that counts. Which nullifies the Internet vote. And
this can allow people who are potentially coerced into voting for
one candidate to go and change their vote. Of course if they're
able to travel to a polling station or vote again online.
But ultimately there's no perfect solution against coercion if
we're talking about a remote system. And then we have to revert to
voting in a polling station in a more standard environment where
principles of secrecy and nondiscrimination are ultimately a lot
easier to preserve. So while there are a number of opportunities
that Internet voting provides that could make elections a lot more
accessible and inclusive for everyone, they are also a lot of
really important risks to consider that any country or election
management should take into account.
Internet voting shouldn't just be instituted because it's a
novelty, it should address many things and immense considerations
made. Holistic of the political, social and economic context of
the country. And this is not to say that there haven't been some
successes for sure.
But the experiences of one country do not necessarily
translate to a success in another. So thank you.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Meredith, for this heads-up and
also interesting panorama about the conditions on global
populations and social consequences that might appear when, you
know, taking Internet voting.
Now I would like to pass the floor to Apar Gupta, the
executive director of the Internet with the foundation. Just
noticing that it's very interesting to have people from many parts
of the world to check the experiences knowing that the problem must
be addressed locally and there are different cultural issue,
political issues, geographic issues as well.
So it is been very interesting to hear you all. So Apar, the
floor is yours. Thank you for coming as well.
>> APAR GUPTA: Thank you so much, Paulo, for inviting me for
this conversation. I've learned a lot from the remarks of the
previous panelists. And there's a lot of local context which
supports the points of Rodrigo, Meredith and Florian. There
is utility in remote voting through online methods, amount of
concerns as well. And I hopefully I'll be providing some local
context in terms of what are those particular developments which
are occurring in India, given that it's rapidly embracing
digitization. Stepping towards that, like to state certain
fundamental understandings about the electoral system in India.
The elections in India held by authority called election
commission of India, which has three commissioners. And the
general elections are held every five years. It happens to be one
of the largest exercises in the world, in fact.
It's presently done through a form of in-person electronic
balloting. Through electronic machines which are -- which count
the ballot choice of each individual in designated areas. Which is
spread all across the country. So it takes sometimes weeks for
general elections to be conducted.
The principal bases for the electronic voting has been to --
to underline and to underline that the costs which are involved in
general elections -- even in the state elections, because we are a
federal country, can be reduced to online voting which will be a
much more scaleable -- which will be a much more scaleable
implementation. And second, the time also which takes -- to
conduct the polls, as well as to poll the ballots can be reduced.
So the argument's quite often are made not only toward
inclusiveness, which may happen in certain specific geographies but
it's also towards efficiency. But do they actually match our
practical experience.
Now at present about six days ago the Union Minister for Home
Affairs, Mr. Kiren Rijiju, responded in Parliament that there's at
present no pending proposal received from the election commission
for conducting online voting for the 2024 general elections.
However, we do notice a movement towards it in a recent pilot which
was implemented on 20th of October in a district in Telangana
state. Now the initiative for the voting system was taken by the
Telangana state election, for the local board election. And it
developed an application which includes voters' name and matches it
to their aadhaar card.
The aadhaar is the Indian national biometric system which has
fingerprint and iris scans already alongside the demographic
details of a person. And there by utilizes biometric
authentication to establish the identity of a person who is
asserting it.
Now, it also -- this application in addition to matching a
voter's name to the archive cards also implemented a live detection
of individual through matching their face with the electoral photo
identity card. So there's a second database. The First Data base
is the national I.D. database, the second electronic database is
the election commission's own database of registered voters. And
underlie lining this importance because we also need to understand
that the national I.D. database to some extent will be talking to
the electoral database. And a technical audit with respect to
this, at this present point in time, has not fully been done as to
what will be the data exchanges which will be involved as well.
Now, in addition to this, other voting app. will also be used
to record voting. For the authentication of the ballot voter the
process will have -- and I'm reading from the press release -- it
will match the name associated with the card, the liveness
detection of the card and matching image corresponding with
electoral photo identity card database. The databases are being
pulled together inside the application, and there is every
possibility it results in some kind of record which is also taken.
Now, since elections necessarily deal with extensive voting
information, including address, party affiliation, birth date and
many much more things, what is important to point out is that India
does not have a data protection law which applies either with
respect to gender data protection or even with respect to the
conduct of such online voting mechanisms through smart phone
applications.
And it is imperative to us that how eve would the PSEC vote
app. which is this voting app. be in recording the voting in light
of privacy concerns and the need for confidentiality and the
secrecy of the ballot. Which is quite important in places such as
India.
Now, in respect of this, there also other legal objections
coming. For instance India's national digital I.D. has been ruled
by the Supreme Court not to be made mandated. It is -- it can only
be demanded in specific circumstances where establishing a person's
identity is necessary and it needs to have a foundational framework
of a legal authorization. And then have a three-prong satisfaction
of standards of necessity, of legitimate purpose and
proportionality. None of this exists. There is no underlying law
even for these pilots at present.
And also you can also examine that the additional data fields
which are being taken, for instance the liviness image is being
taken of a person, which will invariably involve a level of facial
recognition -- where does this go, how long will it be retained?
How will it work?
All of these concerns may draw a very large question mark as
to the safety of voting.
And in places such as India, where you have large amounts of
sectarian based division based on identity politics as well as a
person's religion, caste, language, and gender, this can have very,
very strong impacts in terms of undermining the confidence of
people to actually vote by itself.
So I just wanted to bring this up.
And in -- and you know, these opinions by my -- are not my
own -- are not my own opinions. To a large extent these concerns
have also been voiced by formal chief election commissioners.
Essentially people who are -- who were at the head of the election
commission and have now stated for instance, Mr. Kurichi has stated
specific to this specific deployment, quote-unquote that it is a
dicey proposition because elections are conducted with a total
trust of voters, political parties and the candidates at large.
First one has to see if during the voting, the voting I.D., the
environment, in brackets, that is to say if there's any coercion
and the security of ballots cost.
Counted in the time of counting augmented.
So what I would say is our experience in India to a large
extent has been that any kind of digitization which is ruled out
can result in very -- in new problems being presented. For
instance with online voting it can reside in exclusion, it can
reside in fake votes as well. And until the technology matures to
a reasonable extent in very critical state functions such as
voting, it would be a point of undermining trust of people towards
exercising their ballot. Thank you.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you very much, Apar. You bring up very
interesting idea of connected issues that also have relation to the
adoption of electronic online digital voting, one which are very
important for us to have in mind. Just to remind you all, I know
that there already are questions from the onsite audience. But now
I'd like to quickly go back to the panelists to see if they have
any comments, additions, on what have been said about the five
contributions we had here.
So I think many topics were raised. Topics that connects
different expertise and so on. So I would like to know if Rodrigo,
if you have any comments or addition on any other contribution or
you want -- you would like to complement something that you have
already said. So between three and five minutes. And after
there's another round we'll go for the contributions from the
audience on-site or the online audience as well. So thank you
Rodrigo.
>> RODRIGO SILVA: I have. Thank you. Thanks so much.
Some little points.
First, it's a -- the election in Brazil, I'm -- I think it's
needed to change. First it changed the legislation. The electoral
process do not need to be one day. Like today.
Second, the rule may be official in areas with few voters.
Finally, we needed to -- we needed to digital identity to learn
like Estonia's model. It's very good.
And the challenges about the i vote system, the fellow's
family say, firstly, new technologies in elections need to look to
the process technology, and the people involved. It's a -- really
important to say that.
Second, don't forget that out of this is under the (?) View of
the internal election process technology assistance regulations.
And of course politics. And voting or any average model cannot
transfer the responsibility of security, trust we are facing, or
credibility to technology only. It's my (?) For my speech.
I would like to...to have the questions to Florian. Florian,
in 2018, 2019, in 19 -- 2019, this electronic vote is only part of
electoral process?
In Estonia and other countries have the same dilemma of the
lack of transparency and -- of the elective process.
Do you understand that Estonia trusts the i-voting process?
Do you believe that equation in the electoral process can be
avoided by technology?
I'm done.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Rodrigo. So I will pass that away
to Florian who can answer Rodrigo and also add some topics your
several. It's up to you.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: I will reply to the question first and
raise one and a half points myself.
So the question of trust, partially I think comes inherently
from Estonians' positive experience over the last 20 years. If
something has been working really well and the government has
always been quite transparent if and when something does go wrong,
that you just have this open communication between the government
and the public. I think that's very important.
And with regards to the trust in the online voting system
itself, that's something I forgot to mention during my
presentation. I will share my screen for literally 10 seconds.
The source code for the online voting platform is also public.
It's on GitHub right now. So if you are an IT specialist and you
want to, you know, dig into how exactly the votes are being
delivered and counted and tripped on its own, you can. This is
actually part of our international observer protocol as well.
Because we have international observer, not just for the paper
votes but also for the online voting.
And I think -- I think what helps build the trust in the
system is that it's an option. So we're not forcing anyone to vote
online. If you don't believe in the process, that's okay. Vote on
paper. So it's just one of the options that we provide.
The one point that I wanted to add sort of in agreement with
Apar, is that of course new systems also raise new problems and new
challenges that we didn't have to discuss beforehand. One of the
things with online voting, where also Estonia had to make a choice
was either do we value the secrecy and the privacy of the vote
itself, or do we enable end-to-end accountability? So making sure
that I can verify that my vote really was counted.
And so we came down on the side of privacy of the votes. So
you can only check that -- so in Estonia with a QR code you can
only check that your vote successfully arrived at the voting
server. Over there your identity is being separated of course from
the vote before it is being counted and processed.
So this is a decision that every country would have to make
one way or another.
And the point that I want to add on top of this is very
simple. Let's make sure that we measure any innovation, any new
system by the same standards that we put to the old systems.
So let us not try to expect any God's work that paper voting
itself hasn't provided for centuries.
Quite to the contrary I would say they can be very
complimentary with each other, just as they are in Estonia.
So yeah, it is -- there's no need to push anyone online. It's
perfectly fine if it's an option. And it helps solve some problems
that paper voting has. And paper voting still exists in case you
have any issues with the potential short-comings of online voting.
Thanks.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot, Florian. So Meredith is --
would you approach your issue now.
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Thank you. I learned so much from
this discussion. I'm really grateful for my other panelists. One
thing that I think was really interesting because it came up in
several remarks is how important the digital I.D. system is. And
an electronic civil registry and that it's essentially required for
a successful Internet voting system. And I think it's also
something to think about when you talk about inclusion. Because in
so many countries marginalized communities, for example voters with
disabilities, internally displaced populations, are much less
likely to have identification or access to birth certificate
records.
So Estonia has an incredible architecture for digital
identification and an immense civil registry. But for countries
that do not have this infrastructure in place, looking at how
that's an essential aspect of Internet voting is really crucial.
And also looking at if you're going to digitize your civil registry
in order to have Internet voting, who is going to be missing? And
who is most likely to be missing from that registry?
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Meredith.
So now we're to Apar. So Apar, do you have -- you have your
second round.
>> APAR GUPTA: I like to pass on and invite -- back. So I
went last and I had opportunity already to factor in from the
panelist remarks.
>> PAULO LARA: Okay. No problem. So I know that there's a
question from the audience. There's Alexander Zagny, who said that
would like to share the Russian i-voting experience. But I'm not
quite sure if it's -- he's on-site or online. I guess he's
on-site. So if Alexander is there --
>> ALEXANDER: Yes, I'm on site. Hello.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Alexander, if you could share with
us in five minutes your experience. Thank you for your
participation.
>> ALEXANDER: Well, a few minutes if I get too long just
inform me about this.
So Russia have two years of online voting experience. As
the -- Russia have stated -- state services portal where nearly
each citizen have possibility to get log-in and password. And this
is mainly used as main identification.
We already -- trying to observe -- we already got the
following issues. First of all, the system -- and we actually have
two systems. Moss co-is a country inside a country, has its own
electronic voting system. And last year the federal state election
commission developed its own system. So last elections, this
September, we had two working electronic voting systems.
Both of these systems are not transparent. So technical task
for development of this system have not been published. So we do
not know how these systems are organised internally.
Bits of code have been published on GitHub but mostly the Web
interface of the systems. There is no possibility to watch how the
watch list has been formed. It is said that it's except of least
offline voters. But there is no public possibility to check it.
Also, unlike standard observation at elections when you have
possibility to see how or what commission is checking I.D.s, and
you have a transparent ballot box at the polling station, the
system is not transparent enough.
It is said that blockchain is being used. But what we see in
the published code, some of an official information, blockchain is
used just like database. So it does not have traditional bitcoin
or public blockchain issues.
Also modern mathematical methods for protecting voting secrecy
have been used. Like two agencies develop or it's developments
like (?) Protocols. So some would -- voting results with
anonymized votes have been published publicly. And it was made
statistical analysis saying that winners pro-governmental
candidates gets very strange pattern of votes casted. Like on
Sunday there was a launch of voters for governmental candidates.
So we see that really, really difficult to observe and effect
development of such system in somehow some hybrid or authoritarian
regimes.
The situation is still in development because during the
latest elections, opposition candidates won on the paper voting
stations, but lost because of electronic voting. They send -- they
claim to the courts and it appears -- because there are lead --
really little number of official documents related to electronic
voting. Russian courts just ignore any argument related for
electronic votings or issues in transparency.
So situation is on development.
I'm a member of civil audit of this situation. We're trying
to collect document, collect opinions. And I hope maybe we will
make -- will be possible to make a final report or statements to
the spring.
So if you have questions on issues of Russian electronic
voting, please feel free to ask.
Also I would like to say -- thank Estonian colleague, because
after Russian elections we were able to go to Estonian elections as
part of -- and observing missions and we definitely can say that
Estonia elections are much more observable, much more transparent
than Russian. While Russian propaganda was promising that Russian
elections are much more transparent and fairer than Estonia.
We have seen that Estonia elections are definitely much more
transparent than Russians. If organisers would like, I can contact
them and provide more information. And if you maybe have any
questions to me during the further discussion, please feel free.
I'm here in session. Thank you.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you very much, Alexander, for your
contribution. I think it's very interesting. And I would invite
everyone if they want to share their contacts in the chat, that
would be interesting. Later on we'll be writing our emails and
this can serve as point of contact to everyone who wants to know
more in and get in touch to discuss further those issues.
I -- I'm not sure if Alexander's point was the point that was
mentioned previously to me from another question of the on-site
audience.
I would like to ask if there's any on-site question besides
Alexander's.
Is there?
>> Okay. First of all thank all of you for demonstrating your
points. So my question is namely to the presenter from Estonia.
And I'll clarify why.
So I'm from Georgia. And last two elections in Georgia have
been very important and also controversial. And there is an
opinion that in case we digitalize the elections, few points will
be fixed. But then about digitalization of elections there is one
concern.
The concern of security; and this is the point why I ask to
Estonian. So from which point does the concern of security arises?
So there is two key points. First of all, Georgia faced,
alongside with conventional warfare, cyber attack from Russia in
2008. And secondly, Russia enjoys meddling in the elections of
other countries as well.
So as we know, Estonia also faced cyber offensive from Russia
in 2007 at of scandal of bronze soldier statue. And my question is
how much debate did they have about digitalization of electoral
system. Do they feel secure now in terms of another cyber
offensive, or meddling in terms of electoral processes?
And what would be the recommendation or suggestion to Georgia
in the similar case? Thank you.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: That's a lot of questions. Yeah. You
mentioned the 2007 cyber attacks by a country that we officially do
not know who it was. And it's worth pointing out that, yeah, we
had online voting before. So 2005. So the practice had already
been established that it's possible and it's just another service.
The effect of the 2007 attacks was primarily the lesson that
we saw that our systems worked. It was primarily different kinds
of (?) Attack, basically trying to overload servers with a lot
of -- a lot of access requests. There has been no -- not a single
data breach or incident of data copying or changing from government
databases or citizens' data.
So that was -- overall it was a good sort of crisis
communication test. But it was not an incident that would have
made the population or politicians question whether on the right or
wrong path.
As a reaction to those attacks in 2008 the NATO cyber security
centre of excellence was found in Gallen. So we're sharing our
experience through those channels with all different kinds of nay
NATO member the and affiliated states.
About the Georgian experience and what we are all practicing
to this day is white hat hacking. So you know, paying people to
check whether your systems are as secure as you would like them to
be or as you believe them to be.
And also I think the transparency of the source code really
does help. It's understanding that for many countries it's very
tempting to develop things behind closed doors and then just push
them live. But the more of your source code is public, the more
you give other people the opportunity to find potential problems.
If you have just development team in-house of 10 people, that
work on this for a year or two, there is a risk that you have a
mole inside of that team. So an intentional weakness. There is
the potential have a somebody just missed something and nobody sees
the source code. So you only find out when it's too late.
So going transparent and testing your own systems through
third party providers I think that's a very important combination.
And I encourage you to go ahead with it. Thanks.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Florian. I would like to ask if
there's any other questions from the audience on-site. If not,
okay, I think theres one. Sorry, I cannot see very well. Because
it's very far away, the camera.
>> ALEXANDER: Hey, what's up? Yeah, I had to be fast
because people here are very interested.
So I'm -- another Alexander, I'm Brazilian. I'm really
excited for the discussion because I think it's fascinating. I
think in 50 years from now the technology is exciting, will be
able, you know, mathematically to encrypt the vote and also have
the transparency as well.
But I think what my colleagues here are bringing up is that
very social aspect, you know. We see countries like Estonia and
Switzerland experimenting with online voting and it seems to be
going very well.
But if we think for larger democracies, where there's a lot of
mistrust and political bias and politicians, populists trying to
utilize, undermine the trust on the system. So I like to hear a
little bit of what are the social implications that adopting these
online voting systems could have. And you know the big democracies
that we see. Because if a tiny detail goes wrong, it could have
like -- it could be catastrophe. So I think it's fascinating all
the examples from the colleagues over there. And like to
congratulate all of you for sharing. It's really interesting to
have you know, voting for several days and trying to give people
the options to avoid coercion. But I like to hear a little bit of
the take on the social impact and political impact that online
voting could have.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Alexander. I would just like to
ask if maybe we can take a word from Meredith and Apar about the
issue about the social impacts and examples you have seen in terms
of what kind of -- how careful we need to be in terms of adopting
such technologies in context. They are slightly different from the
ones we have we previously listened to.
So I think if you agree, Meredith and Apar, will contribute
with this question. Thanks a lot.
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Would you like me to go first, Apar,
or do you want to jump in?
I think it's really an important question, because across all
types of the election process, the perception of fraud can be just
as damaging as fraud itself. And the same goes for trust and
security.
So even if you have a really robust and secure system, if
there's a really fragile trust in the institution and how the
process works, it really doesn't matter how secure your system is.
Because the loser will tear it apart. And the public may believe
them.
And there's some really interesting public survey information
that we did in Ukraine which was just sort of asking the public,
you know, would you -- do you think that online voting would be a
good idea?
And you know, about I think 30% of them said sure. And then
if you asked them next do you think it's safe?
And only 20% thought it was safe. So if you're going to have
to do Internet voting, you have to address issues of public trust
through really robust outreach campaigns, by doing things that
Estonia does really well, extreme levels of transparency. But
again if your government is not transparent to start with, then
you're already really, really fighting an up-hill battle when it
comes to introducing any type of new technology, but particularly
Internet voting. Apar over to you.
>> APAR GUPTA: Thank you so much. The social element comes
important. Because we don't implement technology for the thrill of
technology itself. It's not about the novelty of the process. I
also acknowledge that we should consider fairly objectively marking
out the impacts and the positive value it brings. Contrasting it
with paperless ballots as well. But there is a middle point there
as well. We have gone towards electronic voting machines, or EVMs
in the middle. And it has reduced cost, it has increased the --
the facility of the election commission of India to count the
results in a small -- shorter period of time.
And even with that, there are large amount of question marks
which are raised again and again. So the first point is actually
transparency. In existing frameworks where there's a lack of
transparency, and it is compromised in certain state systems, then
you cannot proceed ahead with degree of reliability and trust in
the system itself. Because even with the electronic voting
machines, the argument which has been adopted by the election
commission of Indian has been security by secrecy. We won't allow
audits, we won't give the machines out to independent researchers.
And that ensures that the machines by themselves are secure.
Because nobody knows about them. But machines are also stolen.
And we know about this. Because it is reported in the press.
So you need a higher degree of establishment of trust in the
system through regular amounts of checks which are done technically
in terms of audit processes.
Now, above and beyond the technicality, why is it important in
a social context is that then people have a sense of faith. That
then they are going and exercising their ballot, whether in a
polling booth or they're sitting on their smart phone, it counts.
And if that doesn't happen, they start -- in fact removing
themselves from the electronic process largely.
The second issue I want to bring up is that electronic voting
even when it will be made let's say consensual, completely in a
country like India, you need to take into account that the cost of
average smart phone is a person's one month salary.
And this is as for the -- the lines for affordable Internet.
Even in a consensual system where higher income groups can afford
the smart phone will vote, you may have a degree of resource
deployment which will constrain the amount of physical votes which
are there. So the physical votes which are there for the 2024
elections will not be the same in number, same in facilities. Same
in security deployment, in 2034. Ten years later because the state
will restrict its budgetary allocation for physical polling,
relying onion line voting by saying that it serves greater degrees
of efficiency, and more people can vote and the voting percentages
are increasing.
But that will be voting percentages from higher income groups.
People who are in metropolitan areas. And why I can foresee
this -- and I say this is a reasonable hypothetical, because you
have seen the same amount of technocratic implementation in other
skate schemes where anytime you introduce any form of digitization,
it displaces existing system without the objective audit as to the
benefits which are resulting for people.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you, Apar. Can you all hear me?
I just have a sign -- okay. Nice. Thanks a lot.
Just a quick -- add a quick note to comment a bit on the
question of the social consequences for that.
In Brazil we have like parts of the territories in big cities,
and in the Countryside which are controlled by militias, political
militias who actually gives in many cases the Internet connection
and provide Internet services for a big part of the population. So
it's important that you all mention how complex in terms of not
only the strong legislation that guarantees, you know, the personal
data, but also culturally, you know, it's different to see -- I
mean in Brazil for example we have one Sunday election. So every
elections is done in one Sunday where people go out from their
houses to the polling stations and then back. And then the result
is made one hour, one hour and a half after the poll is finishes.
In some cases, for example in India, you have, you know, days
running the electoral process.
And it's important to note as well that any modification and
adoption of new technologies should accompany this sort of logistic
and cultural aspect so people can understand and have confidence in
the process. So I think this is a great take from the contribution
of you all.
I think -- I would like just to -- I know that Alexander said
he could reply on also political implications. And I thank you
Alexander, but before that I would like also to see -- I understand
that there is some people who want to have contributions who
haven't got the chance to contribute before.
Not sure if online or, on-site, is there anyone who wants to
contribute a little bit who haven't done it before?
I don't think so, right? So Alexander, yes, up to you.
>> Hi. Sorry.
>> PAULO LARA: There's one.
>> I'm Bahia, I'm going to have a quick question maybe if --
can answer it. We already talked about security implementation of
an online voting system. I would be interested in resources and
costs. So are they transparent? How much did it cost to implement
this or like even percentage. Because I think that's always a big
problem. And it seems like a good opportunity to have both.
But of course it seems to be quite a -- maybe not an
affordable for a lot of countries. So thank you.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: I'll take that straight away, yes?
>> PAULO LARA: Please, Florian and then we can go back to
Alexander on site.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: This is one of the biggest
misunderstandings, digitization only works in smaller countries
because of cost. Estonia was a dirt poor post Soviet organisation
when it started in 1991. Seen as a cost saver. The average online
vote today is around 50% the cost of the average physical vote.
All of these different polling stations, some of them are in
schools, some of them are in the Countryside, some of them in the
most expensive shopping centres, just to be accessible to people.
You know, they're expensive.
And staff, you know, some of them are volunteers, some of them
are not. So these things cost money as well. And we've seen that
in Estonia, it roughly -- you know, it's halved the cost of the
average vote and the beauty of technology is that it's scaleable.
So the per capita investment in Estonia will be several times
higher than it would be if it was implemented in India. Because
you know, we have to build -- set up the same kind of server
hardware, we have to put the same amount of time into programming
and encryption and so on. Of course India will need an if you more
servers for the millions of people and the data connection, so on.
But overall the investment for bigger countries, such as
Germany, would be per capita a lot lower than they were for
Estonia.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks, Florian. Now over to on-site again I
guess is Alexander. Right? Over to you. Thanks.
>> Alexander: Yeah. I will start answering previous
question. Actually for a bigger countries, implementation of
electronic voting systems a fraction of physical voting. And this
leads to one of the main political consequences in Russia. In
Russia we have about 98,000 electoral commissions. With average
ten people in commission.
So for sure electronic voting will be much cheaper because
it's, well, form one or two commissions only by number of regions,
80 regions. But now if you need to fake results to -- well,
provide good results for Mr. Putin, you have to deal with eight --
with 98,000 electoral commissions.
And actually each region is competing who's providing the
better result. But in this case if they have mechanisms providing
great results for elections of Mr. Putin, they have -- they can use
the same mechanism for providing result for themselves. So local
governors.
And we have a league for presidential administration. That's
presidential administrations in Russia expect that now they can
fake result centrally. From -- from the -- with one point. That's
actually makes terrified local governments, and members -- numbers
of political consult tans that who understand now is a job worth
nothing. Because they can be adjusted. Actually there is not a
political implication because central administrations now, when the
results are fake -- are faked through thousands of electoral
commissions, they do not know real results of voting. Does not
know real opinion.
Local governor or something like. Now they expect when they
have electronic voting, they have ability to know the real results,
real opinion of people.
But replaces from the centre and have what do they expect?
This is not clear or understand by the larger audience. By
the large community. But the people who already understand it,
like political consultants, they have real inflation for political
activities.
So we already -- not know final results of what happens
especially after this near -- fakes. But we still observes
implementation and awaiting next year. Thanks.
>> PAULO LARA: I think Florian wants to add something. And I
guess Rafaela has something afterwards?
>> RAFAELA DE ALCANTARA: Yes. Maybe I can ask afterwards.
>> PAULO LARA: Over to Florian and then a question -- Florian
and then Meredith and then Rafaela. Thank you. Florian over to
you.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: I wanted to make a very small addition
because I hate not having precise answers. There's a wonderful
research paper called how much does an e-vote cost?
And it's an analysis of the Estonian case. So the elect day
voting on paper cost per ballot is 4 Euros and 37 cents. Advance
voting in such a paper way can be up to 20 Euros and 41 cents. And
the average online vote costs 2 Euros and 32 cents, so he that's
just to give you an idea of the sort of numbers we're talking
about. Thanks.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks, a lot, Florian. Meredith?
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Thanks.
>> I also sort of wanted to talk a little bit about cost. And
especially countries that are just starting out on sort of their
digital transformation journey or considering new electoral
technology.
. Because cost eventually do and can reduce over time. But
there is an initial and major investment. And particularly when
you think about staff training. Voter outreach, the amount of
information needed to share with the public, particularly in
countries with low amounts of trust. And then if you have sort of
elements that help sort of discourage coercion or have a backup
against coercion, you also still have your polling stations open in
addition to the Internet vote.
So Internet voting, if it was by itself could potentially over
time be cheaper, but if you have these contingencies to ensure that
people are able to vote freely and change their vote at a polling
station if they want to, it's not always necessarily cheaper, in my
opinion.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you. Not sure -- Rodrigo, you want to
add something before Rafaela's question, or...
>> RODRIGO SILVA: Yes, I have. Florian. These values, but
the values do not include the technology, right?
The paper saves just about the -- the administration, the
paper and the implementation, physical implementation, not
technology, right? Because technology is so expensive.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: No, as far as I understand, it's about the
IT systems that were set up specifically for online voting as well.
It does of course not include the running costs of electronic
identities. Because electronic identities are used for 99 percent
of government services in Estonia. So that would not be quite so
fair. But yeah, it includes the technology for that particular
solution.
>> RODRIGO SILVA: Yeah, I think sort of all technology
processes includes cryptocurrency, and it is cheap and other --
the -- are so expensive. But I understand. Okay. Thank you.
>> PAULO LARA: Thank you. So Rafaela, over to you.
>> RAFAELA DE ALCANTARA: Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm
learning a lot today. Thank you.
And I'd like to ask a question for Meredith.
Thinking about the domestic violence and how this time is
sensitive in such a -- in other parts of the world. I'd like to
ask you if you could deepen a little bit more on regard to thinking
domestic violence, thinking i-voting in the context in each,
domestic violence is a reality.
And referring not only to gender violence but also -- but I
think that maybe ageism can be thinking -- can be an aspect that
should be assessed in this regard. Thank you so much.
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Thank you. That's a really thoughtful
question. And all of those are very valid points. When you think
of domestic violence, I focussed some of my remarks on violence
against women. But violence of all forms in the home has been
increasing and spiking as people experience the stress of COVID,
the stress of unemployment. And you've seen a resulting violence,
you've seen people losing their homes and moving in with more
family members. So homes are oftentimes more crowded, with fewer
resources.
And you're absolutely right that abuse of older people, abuse
of people with disabilities, ageism, ableism have all been on the
rise. It hasn't been a great pandemic for many of these issues.
And they continue to worsen.
When you look at any system that's remote, where you don't
have an objective person who can secure your right to secrecy, to
privacy, it's obviously a threat in context especially like that.
Because the consequences will never be seen. Because so much
of domestic violence, whether it's gender-based or otherwise, goes
underreported.
Significantly underreported. And then underprosecuted. So
it's very unlikely that you'll ever get statistics that say I was
coerced by my husband, or by my son or daughter, even. Into voting
a certain way because I am, you know, a survivor of abuse.
The reporting will just not be there. Because historically it
has never been there. So it is a real problem. And it's one that
has to be considered when you're talking about, you know, a human
right such as voting freely and safely.
>> PAULO LARA: That's a lot. Meredith. Can you guys hear
me?
Okay. Cool. Because it was frozen here.
Yes, thanks a lot.
I believe that there's no further questions from the on-site.
I would like you to -- I mean, we do have still -- we still have 15
minutes of debate. There's no other questions from the on-site
audience. I would like to propose that we have a final round
amongst the panelists and it will be interesting to get to know
precisely and direct things that you would like to -- that you
think are important for the discussion and for adopting such kind
of technologies. I'm thinking here for example who's responsible
for developing those technologies and implementing?
In Brazil we do have the superior electoral court. I see
there's someone on the on-site so I'll open up to you. Just after
I finish. Thanks a lot.
But if it's possible, a round amongst participants to include
precise recommendations for those who are thinking about adopting
and -- adopting e-voting and also thinking on electoral processes
and its relation with technology. I'll hand it over to the
question. The floor is over to you.
>> MAXIMUM: I want to add something. Thank you.
My name is Maximum and I am from Belarus. It's near
Alexandra, Russia. We have another problem. And I want to share
the information about us and about the electoral -- electronic
voting.
As you -- as you know, I think we have mass protests in our
country which were the first mass -- really mass protests for 25,
26 years.
And one of the main reason for these protest was the
involvement of a large amount of people in political issues.
People believes all the time -- believed all the time that election
doesn't -- doesn't solve anything. We have only one president for
all years. But private initiative goals made them parallel system
of voting. People who went to electoral -- no -- for voting
places, they photo their bulletin -- they're voting papers. And
send them to the central platform.
And...these involve over 20% of people. 20% of people was --
was involved in private initiative of collecting votes. And
according to all -- to the -- to this and other information, we --
we believe that our president Tsikhanouskaya, I think you know.
And the most interesting part of this electronic initiative
was increasing them interest of voting, of taking part in voting,
or taking part in election company for many people who don't --
who -- who haven't voted for many, many, many years.
And these -- I feel -- I think these experience may be -- will
be interesting for other countries which want to change situation.
Because then people want to -- want to change things, and they
I think believe even private initiatives, private platforms.
And it was very interesting -- it was very interesting
platform, it was very interesting station. All the people who work
there now in -- not in Belarus, around all the world. And our
struggle is continuing. Thank you very much.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot. It's very interesting to see
that the engagement on the discretion comes from a context where
the political debate is very strong and there are some difficulties
in terms of, you know, maintaining the democracy and so on. I
speak from Brazil and we are having difficulties, there's
contributions from Russia, Belarus, et cetera. And I thank you all
for the interesting discussion. I will give this over to the panel
gists and if you want to address any remaining issues. And if
possible think of what could be the main contributions to the
debate in your views and your areas of expertise. So we can have a
nice report and go on with the conversation.
Rafaela is going to also add our emails on the chat. So if
you want to see -- and get to know more about work on the issues,
it will be very interesting for us to keep a contact with all of
you who are interested in this topic. Because we've gone -- we're
going to keep having works on the issue for the next year. So
thanks a lot. And I will follow the -- I think the same order of
the beginning. So I'll start with Rodrigo. So the floor is yours,
Rodrigo. Thanks.
>> RODRIGO SILVA: Thank you very much to share this moment in
view. And my fellow panelists. And last to words about this topic
is hot topic, it's important to say in our system, or I-vote has
100% end to end for verifiability. It's not possible today. And
I-votes, it's not enough to appear to be trustful of -- but to be
trustful.
It's important. So my pleasure, again. My final and -- keep
in touch everyone.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot, Rodrigo for your contribution.
So over to Florian.
>> FLORIAN MARCUS: Yeah. Thanks a lot. I just want to
keep -- or just want to finish effectively on the note of maturity.
And where we should touch very carefully. Because it means
different things to different people. But maturity in two ways.
Number one in order for Internet voting to work, probably you need
some digital maturity. This means probably you need an electronic
identity. Probably you need secure data exchange. In Estonia
that's called the X road if you're interested. It's also open
source; but yeah. So data exchange is important. Cyber hygiene
from the population side. If people don't know how to use
computers in a safe manner, then we have a problem.
So these are things that you know, are topics for Estonia.
And I would be surprised if they weren't on the wish list for
Christmas on other countries, you know, minds as well.
And then also, yeah, there's the question of societal
maturity. Democratic maturity. And I -- we had a delegation from
a slightly less democratic or stable country recently. And they
asked, yes, so how do you verify that at the end of the day, when
all the votes are counted, that that's actually the correct result?
And my answer was, well, you know, we have this electoral
commission, and the courts look over it for a second. And then
also we have observers from all the different political parties.
That is not an option if you have -- even if it's a democracy,
but effectively a one-party rule where the same party has been in
power for the last 30 years even though elections are contested,
per se. So there are different factors that we have to take into
account. And that contributes to the success or the inevitable
demise of an attempt at online voting. And -- sorry, yes, you can
add me on LinkedIn, if you want. Thanks. Bye.
>> PAULO LARA: That's great. Thanks a lot. Meredith?
>> MEREDITH APPLEGATE: Thanks. And thanks again to all of
the participants and those who spoke. And also to the panelists.
This has been I think a really interesting discussion.
Beyond some of the things that have already been touched on
regarding being transparent, and sort of digital maturity, as it
was phrased, so looking at what your level of digital literacy in
the population is, what kind of civil registration system you have.
I would also just sort of go to the base question, which is what
sort of problem in your election are you trying to solve?
And is Internet voting the correct solution for that problem?
So sort of taking a more holistic view instead of technology
for the purpose of technology.
Look at really what issues you want to address and then figure
out which tools will best address them.
And then if you do decide to pilot new technology or introduce
new technology like Internet voting, testing real consultations
especially with women's group, disability rights groups, people who
will know who are being left out, who will be having issues with
these systems.
And then you know, trial on a nonlive election. Real
analysis. And do not rush would be my advice and my
recommendation.
>> PAULO LARA: Great. Thanks a lot, Meredith, for your
participation and insightful thoughts.
Apar, over to you. Please.
>> APAR GUPTA: Thank you so much. This conversation has
provided me a lot of perspective also when do such systems also
work. And what can be certain guiding principles around.
I think this kind of a panel on the -- or especially in which
people from different jurisdictions are sharing experiences can
also lead to much more collaborative frameworks, for identification
of common principles around online and electronic voting. And I
think that can be a starting point for essentially ensuring some
degree of standardization as we all first believe in the value of
democracy and free and fair elections. I think that's one
suggestion I would just like to make.
Possibly this panel can spur a greater degree of conversation
amongst participants around -- or even attendees to promote some
kind of frameworks, common principles around online voting, which
can be discussed much more international forums, much more
regularly.
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot, Apar.
I would like to truly thank everyone for their contributions.
The on-site audience has been amazing. Our panelists, people who
are watching this online. And insist that it's -- we're open to
(froze) everyone who wants to take part in this discussion. I
mean, so the topic is full of interesting questions, and as Apar
said, I think it's a challenging way to figure out some common
issues that could drive the discussion and the implementation of
technology.
And as Meredith said, this is not only about technology, but
about sorting out and solving problems and dealing with the
participation in democracy and the issue for democratic society.
If there's not any other contribution or thoughts, I would like to
end up here thanking you all for participation on the panel and
thanking you in the name of ARTICLE 19, Brazil. Good afternoon and
congratulations to the IGF event. And I hope to see you guys very
soon.
(Applause)
>> PAULO LARA: Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.