By Brett Winterford
In October 2005, the Joint Standing Committee for Electoral Matters (JSCEM) handed the Federal Government its routine report into the last Federal election. The report summarised submissions from various groups in Australia that wished to discuss how the electoral system could be improved, and made recommendations to the Federal Government on what reforms it might consider for future elections. It showed that for most Australian electors, physically casting a vote at a local polling booth on a given Saturday might be a simple process, but for others the system is less than ideal.
Consider the difficulty, for example, a person with print disability would encounter when trying to cast an independent, unassisted vote. Or the difficulties involved with collecting postal votes from Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel working overseas, travellers in the far-flung corners of the world, or even our own residents in remote Australia. Aside from the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), that manages the voting process in Australia, submissions to the JSCEM came mostly from those groups marginalised by the current system: societies for the blind, local councils in remote areas and the ADF among them. Many complained that the postal voting system was flawed and some argued that it should be done away with now that the Internet is so widely used.
The AEC used the opportunity to put forward some proposals to the committee—two of them detailing the means by which it would seek to conduct a small-scale trial of electronic voting in Australia.
The proposal
The first of these proposed trials involves the provision of DREs (Direct Recording Electronic voting machines) in select pre-poll voting centres to assist those electors with print disability. The second proposal, of most interest to the technology community, is the implementation of a remote electronic voting system for ADF and Australian Federal Police (AFP) personnel serving in overseas territories and Australian citizens working in Antarctica.
More than 2000 Defence personnel were serving abroad during the 2004 election and according to the ADF’s submission to the committee, many experienced delays or difficulties in using the postal system to cast their vote. “Given the advance of secure communications and the risks associated with attempts to apply traditional voting methods in a war zone, Defence believes that electronic voting warrants investigation,” the ADF says in its submission.
The AEC has formed the view that these are ideal groups to take part in a trial of e-voting. For a start, they are a select group of Australians that are not well served by the current voting system. Second, such groups have extensive personal identification and network security procedures, which would strengthen the integrity of such a trial. The joint standing committee, while cautious in its approach, backed the proposal and recommended the electronic voting trial to the government. The trial was also endorsed by then Special Minister of State, Senator Eric Abetz.
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