Stumbling Blocks of Electronic Voting Revealed by U.S. and European Experiences

Abstract

The question of electoral participation has today become a major issue for the future of democratic systems. In the USA and Europe, voter turnout continues to fall. Faced with this strong erosion of political participation, the watchword is mobilization. In this connection, several proposals, chiefly technical in nature, have been put forward to curb this rising voter absenteeism. For example, several projects have been developed with a view to putting in place new voting procedures, including among others, telephone voting, postal voting, computer voting, Internet voting, using pre-perforated cards, mobile phones or digital terminals installed in public places (shopping centres, public buildings, etc.).