Electronic voting (also known as e-voting or EVM) refers to voting using electronic media to help or to take care of casting tasks and counting votes.Depending on the implementation in particular, electronic voting may use separate electronic machines (also called EVMs) or computers connected to the Internet. It covers a range of Internet services, from basic data transmission to full online voting function through common home connection devices. Likewise, the degree of automation can range from simple tasks to a complete solution that includes voter registration and authentication, registration of votes, local or room counting, encryption and transmission of voting data to servers, The consolidation and tabulation of votes and the administration of elections. A system worthy of electronic voting must fulfill most of these tasks, complying with a set of standards set by regulatory bodies and must also be able to deal with successful requirements related to security, accuracy, completeness, speed, privacy, auditing and accessibility. Profitability, scalability and ecological sustainability.
Electronic voting technology may include punch cards, optical scanner voting systems and specialized voting kiosks (including self-registering electronic voting systems or DRE). It may also involve the transmission of ballots and votes through telephones, private computer networks or the Internet.
In general, two main types of electronic voting can be identified:
• electronic voting that is physically supervised by representatives of government or independent electoral authorities (for example, electronic voting machines located in polling stations);
• e-voting remotely over the Internet (also called i-voting) where the voter votes at home or goes to a polling station.
Many insecurities have been found on commercial voting machines, such as using a default management password. There are also reported cases of machines that make unpredictable and inconsistent errors. The key issues with electronic voting are, therefore, the opening of a system for the public examination of external experts, the creation of an authentic paper record of the votes cast and a chain of custody for the records.
Electronic voting technology can speed up vote counting, reduce the cost of paying staff to count votes manually, and can provide better accessibility for disabled voters. However, there has been restraint, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially the DRE vote, could facilitate electoral fraud and can not be completely auditable. In addition, electronic voting has been criticized as unnecessary and costly to introduce. While countries such as India continue to use electronic voting, a number of countries have either canceled electronic voting systems or decided against large-scale deployment, notably the Netherlands, Germany and the UK due to issues of EVM reliability.