Putting electronic voting under the microscope

Electronic voting entered the political arena some years ago, with some countries advocating its use, some countries trialling and then abandoning it and yet others preferring to preserve the status quo of paper-and-pencil voting within a voting booth. In this paper we present the pros and cons of electronic voting and propose a set of characteristics we think electronic voting systems should exhibit. We then briefly review some pertinent concerns, issues and worries. We conclude by introducing the Handivote system, an electronic voting system that supports voting by means of SMS messaging, and explain how it measures up in terms of our own specified characteristics.