Smith has just finished writing a report on computerised voting, entitled: -Electronic voting: benefits and risks."
-Part of the concern I think is the sociology of voting," Smith told ZDNet Australia -Traditionally you go to a polling booth, taking time to go there and think about what you're doing." Electronic voting, he said, could reduce the importance of the act and people might treat it less seriously and take less deliberation over their decision.
Similarly, Smith believes there needs to be some research on e-voting secrecy, to get an indication whether lack of confidentiality is a serious problem or not, because that and undue influence in the home situation or in the workplace will hinder electronic voting in these environments, he said.
-In polling stations there's some level of secrecy, therefore I foresee we won't have home Net voting straight on," Smith said.
Whilst Smith admits there are problems of some kind in both paper and computerised electoral systems -using computers I think will solve some of the problems," he said, pointing specifically to speed and accuracy.
For example, audit trails with electronic system will be much better, according to Smith. -The US Presidential election was a nightmare. Doing the same sort of analysis of what's happened using computers will be much better."
Smith also pointed out the complexity of the Australian Federal voting papers, compared to a fairly simple computer screen that could be much easier. -Electronic voting can incorporate a whole range of different machines and software," he said. -You don't need to have great skill in using a computer...there are some very simple applications, easy to use."
Smith also pointed out the enormous financial savings to be made by not having paper electoral system. Such cost savings, he said, could be channelled into installing special Net kiosks for people to vote in rural areas, or for people with certain disabilities, to ensure an e-voting system didn't discriminate against voters.
However, with just half the adult Australian population having used the Internet, that percentage would have to increase before the government could consider national e-voting, he said.
Despite the benefits that electronic electoral voting bring, Smith said every government embarking on it must consider the technical problems of a lot of people all voting at the same time. Using electronic voting in the ACT during the Legislative Assembly election in October last year, as an example of servers becoming overloaded, he said: -You have to have a very sophisticated set of servers to cope with the whole population voting at the same time." With demands on technology being so large, alphabetical, staggered voting on different days of the week would be one consideration, he suggested.
Smith said he didn't really consider security as being an issue, as the same commercial solutions as are used for financial transactions would be incorporated into e-voting systems. -I think if it's adequate for that purpose [financial transactions] it should be for this as well." And whilst there are instances of manipulation of paper voting systems, -I think these problems probably will continue to exist with e-voting," he added.
Before national electoral electronic voting takes off in Australia, Smith said he foresees repeat trials of those that were carried out in the ACT last year happening in other states.
-Computers are already used to an enormous extent in the electoral system," he said, pointing out that a lot of vote analysis takes place on election night electronically. -Therefore, it's not a great step to adopt that into an Internet-based system."
