John Otieno Oredo / John.oredo@gmail.com / @JohnOredo
Among
the defining attributes of democracy are universal suffrage among adult
citizens and fair and regular elections. The elections enable the citizens of a
country to define the kind of a state they want. A state comprises a clique
that claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of power within a given
territory. Since this acquisition of power is done through elections in
true-democratic and quasi-democratic countries, there is a great incentive for
those seeking power to engage in electoral fraud. Prevailing wisdom is that elections which are
close – where the front runner and the first runner-up enjoy similar levels of
support before the polls take place could highly motivate electoral corruption.
In
order to safeguard democracy, which in many countries is won through a
protracted struggle against the existing authoritarian regimes, we must regard
elections, their processes and the individual vote as assets to be protected.
This is a noble goal that can only be achieved when election boards superintend
elections that accurately reflect voters’ intentions and ensure public
confidence. In fact even competing parties should strive for a free and fair
elections because as the sanctity of elections decline, so too does the
legitimacy of the regime produced by such an election.
Election
boards or commissions as we call them here must safeguard their integrity
against any manipulation arising from the competing parties. One way of doing
this is to ensure that the entire electoral process is beyond reproach. In the
past we have conducted elections through the use of ballot papers. The word
ballot comes from the Italian ballota which
refers to an ancient election technique where balls were placed in a container
to signify votes. What we use today is known as Australian paper ballot that was
first used in 1888 for statewide elections in New York and Massachusetts.
Learning
from the failure of ballot voting, electoral commissions the world over are
gravitating toward the adoption of e-voting technologies to improve the quality
of the voting process. In a rush to take advantage of the advances in
Information Technology (IT), e-voting systems are being implemented by
electoral bodies with a naïve confidence that it is the panacea to all the ills
afflicting electioneering especially at the national levels. Due to hype and
technology vendors’ rhetoric, risks to the use of e-voting systems are usually
underestimated with the effect that contingency measures are ignored. Risks to
any form of system are usually seen in terms of the threats to the system
(exposure), the likelihood of the threats occurring (probability) and the loss
due to the threat in case it materializes (consequence). The threats to an
e-voting system may stem from the system developers and providers, election
insiders, political party hawks usually in collusion with partisan civil
service operatives. These threats include injection of malicious code into the
tallying server and tampering with the voting equipment amongst others. The probability of these threats actualizing
is a factor of the motivation of the attackers and the vulnerability of the
e-voting system. The motivation of attackers is driven largely by the level of
stakes in the particular election. The vulnerability of the technology will
mainly result from testing that focuses on functionality rather than weaknesses.
The consequences or magnitude of loss in a failed electoral system can be seen
in monetary terms which may be easier to deal with. The greatest damage results
from the loss of public trust in the institutions mandated to conduct
elections.
While
election bodies try to put in place foolproof e-voting systems, they are faced
with great challenges especially in the developing countries. On top of the
list is the poor infrastructure especially in marginalized areas. Here we are
talking about transport, communication and grid power networks. The election bodies
lack the IT capacity to assess the risks associated with complex systems. They
seem to rely mainly on the expertise of technology vendors. Borrowing from
principal-agency theory, it seems that the election officials are at
information disadvantage and therefore unable to make fully informed decisions.
Other challenges include lack of close and continuous control over staff,
infrequency of national elections - which limits quick acquisition of
experience, political interference and the pressure of timelines resulting from
poor planning or constitutional imposition. The opaque nature of the operations
of technology vendors is also an issue. The vendors usually supply proprietary
software making it difficult to transparently scrutinize them. The reason is to
ensure security of the systems, a style known as security by obscurity in
system security loops.
Any
voting technology must address the concerns of security and transparency.
Security in electoral systems refers to safeguarding the votes and the vote
totals from fraud and any other form of manipulation. Transparency demands that
voting technologies produce auditable results in which candidates and voters
can have confidence. In a bid to employ e-voting systems, election boards must
address the security concern by thoroughly testing systems with an eye to their
redundancy and resilience. The process of acquiring, installing, testing and
deploying electoral technology must be transparent. This requirement is not
only a democratic principle but is also stipulated in chapter seven of the
Kenya’s constitution as a tenet of free and fair elections. The improvement of
voting systems must be seen as an on-going process which requires the judicial,
legislative and executive branches of government to play their rightful role in
strengthening the capabilities of our electoral body towards its mandate of
conducting credible elections. While losing contestants will always want to
pooh-pooh election results, their motivation should not derive from open
negligence arising from the incompetence of the electoral body.
Research Note
As
third level students of information systems and budding researchers, what
should be our contribution towards addressing the challenges of migration from
ballot to e-voting systems? In my previous blog, we realized that Information Systems
is a discipline that deals with technology in use- in this case its use in
electoral process. The following random thoughts came to my mind after
completing this blog:
-Can
our research critically examine the challenges of e-voting systems in
developing countries like Kenya?
-Borrowing
from literature in systems security, are we capable of conceptualizing and
addressing system breaches that may compromise the credibility of results
arising from e-voting systems.
-How
can we use natural accident theory, high-reliability theory and other theories
as lens to investigating issues and concerns surrounding e-voting systems?
-How
can our research policy regarding use of technology in the electoral process.
Let
us hear your thoughts.
