The SRF released an article today that the progress of implementing E-Voting has stalled.

Source

In my opinion, that's good. E-Voting is incredibly dangerous. The fundamentals of democracy are based on the fact that we all understand what it takes to win an election or a vote. You need one more vote than the opposition. That's it. And anybody, if they wanted to, can go count it.

I personally have no issue with e-voting for disabled people, which may benefit greatly from this, or people outside the country, because both of these groups do not make up a large enough share to severely impact national votes. However, anything more, and I oppose it strictly.

It may increase voter participation, but at what cost? The system would become less secure and more based on trust that the system is actually doing what the voters want. Claims such as elections being stolen will become harder to disprove as the average person has no idea how to program or let alone understand how a database functions. How can a normal person be expected to verify that a person actually won with e-voting tools? They can't!

We see this with Trump. In the US, he blamed the voting machines for stealing the election. Was it true? Probably not. But because they're reliant on this technology, rather than counting it by hand and writing it by hand, it is more easily believable for people. Anybody should be able to go to the Gemeinde and verify the amount of votes anything got. This is no longer possible with e-voting.

Also, if it increases voter participation, I believe it will likely attract voters which are less informed. If you're unwilling to go through the already easy process of just filling out the letter they send you and dropping it in the mailbox on your way to work, should you really participate in important votes and elections? You have the right to, of course, but should we really make it easier? Should we really make it so easy that a person in a YouTube video can make a call to action to vote for that and a person can go and immediately do it?

I understand that people want the convenience of e-voting, but is it really worth giving up the security and certainty that we know our elections are fair in exchange for a little bit of convenience?

Yes, the system has supposedly been tested for years and is secure, but no system is truly secure, and every system has flaws. The things we vote on are worth billions based on the result. Do we really think it is that naive to think that a company will hire people to find security flaws in the system and exploit them? Or even just sow doubt because of the lack of understanding?

Even if you do it with new technologies, such as blockchain technology, to secure it, which could be possible, the issue with that is now that you potentially could identify voters, which is even worse.

And the worst part is, unlike with fraudulent elections done on paper, it is almost impossible to detect. If an exploit is found, it is unlikely to be detected, unless it's reported, which, if somebody found it, is worth billions, therefore unlikely to go reported. It is almost impossible to buy the outcome of an election on paper, because you need to buy so many letters from so many people, and it requires a lot of effort to write yes or no on all of the letters, therefore making it unlikely that it remains a secret for a long time. Whereas with a digital system, you would only need one skilled hacker to exploit it.

Voting machines have been hacked at DEFCON a lot, and that is a real issue. Even if the system is completely secure, it may raise doubts, which makes democracy less stable. Source

In the U.S. this has led to the violent storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2020. Whether the people were right or not that the election was stolen is irrelevant. The supporters of Trump felt it was because the system raised doubts.

Also another concern is if this is all digital and you access it through the web browser you access everything from, could cookies or malicious extensions potentially track what you vote for?

It isnt legal to engage in white hack hacking in Switzerland. Hacking of any kind is punishable in Switzerland, even if you're doing it as a white hat. Therefore, you could actually be prosecuted for pointing out bugs.

I am not the only one with these concerns. Here is an extract from the article:

Auch IT-Expertinnen und -Experten sind kritisch. Etwa Anwalt Martin Steiger, Spezialgebiet Recht im digitalen Raum, sagt: «Man muss letztlich darauf vertrauen, dass beim E-Voting alles seine Ordnung hat.» Abstimmen und Wählen sollten aber nicht Vertrauenssache sein, sondern durch Laien überprüft werden können. Doch das sei nicht möglich. Deshalb rät Martin Steiger: Die Schweiz sollte auf E-Voting verzichten.

Tom Scott also has a great Video explaining why this is a terrible idea:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkH2r-sNjQs

If the Bund decides to implement this everywhere, I will do everything in my power to stop it.

TLDR:

• Stalling of e-voting is good
• E-voting makes it difficult for average citizens to verify election results, moving from a transparent system to one based on trust in complex technology.
• Sacrifices significant security and verifiability for minimal convenience.
• The "black box" nature makes it harder to disprove claims of stolen elections, potentially destabilizing democracy (like in the US)
• Digital systems are susceptible to sophisticated, hard-to-detect attacks, with potentially high financial incentives for bad actors.
• Concerns exist about potential tracking of votes through web browsers or malicious software.

What do you guys think about E-Voting?