Author Justas Stankevičius
Last November, the Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christians Democrats, The Liberal Movement, and the Freedom Party agreed on a central-right coalition agreement. In the agreement, among other statements that deserve fair criticism, there is a plan that will fundamentally change the electoral process in Lithuania. These are online voting plans. Given the tensions surrounding electoral fraud following the U.S. presidential election, it would be worth looking at the reasons why online voting is simply an impossible utopia.
Key arguments against online voting
According to data protection experts, online voting removes voting secrecy. The systems currently available cannot guarantee that they will fully protect the anonymity of the voter. This means that devices infected with malware can violate voting confidentiality. Critics of online voting rightly argue that there is transparency but also a danger to national security. In the case of online voting, it would be even easier to bribe and manipulate votes: it’s not clear whether online voting systems would be apolitical and would not “clean up” certain votes. It should also be borne in mind that foreign intelligence would have a much easier way of manipulating election results – unlike physical ballots, it would not be possible to recalculate electronic votes manually, as this would be done centrally in the case of online voting. Besides, there would be no election observers in voting online to ensure a smooth voting process. If online voting is implemented, we will simply be forced to blindly trust the online voting system.
Is the adoption of such a reform in absentia democratic?
Unfortunately, such an important issue is presented in the collation agreement as one of the tasks that the collation has to do tells nothing about the will of the voters themselves. Citizens have the right to express their civic will, because, as one of the essential provisions of the constitution states, the Lithuanian state is created by the Nation, and the voting process is one of the most important components of democracy.
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