Internet voting is an unlikely candidate for Australia's next federal election, despite a growing tally of real-life successful polls.
The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) said it has "no firm plans" to drive for legislation to permit online voting at public elections.
"Current legislation doesn't allow for online voting at a Federal level," an AEC spokesperson told ZDNet Australia, although she confirmed that the development of new technology that would enable electronic voting has been monitored now for a number of years.
With start-up costs to consider, "it's not feasible at the moment," the spokesperson said. "Although online voting presents a user-friendly opportunity for those who are computer literate, not 100 percent of the Australian population are [computer literate], therefore there currently isn't a system to fit the Australian environment," she added.
US-based Election.com -- which has conducted over 600 private elections in the US and carried out the world's first legally binding public Internet election for Arizona Democratic Presidential primary in March -- has recently set up shop in Australia.
At the Arizona election, 41 percent of votes were cast online and 79 percent cast remotely -- either over the Internet or using postal services. This is evidence of the community "telling us they want to vote at their own convenience, on their own turf, when they want to," argued Election.com Australia managing director Frank Nesci.
"What we're about is making the voting process easier than ever before. In non-compulsory elections we believe that it really helps to get additional voting participation, " added Bill Taylor, Election.com's vice president of Election Services in an interview with ZDNet Australia.
As it is compulsory to vote at Government elections in Australia, the AEC said security issues relating to electronic voting systems are of particular concern. Any system would have to resolve the issue secret balloting, "check who has voted and who hasn't but not match the actual vote with an individual's name," the spokesperson stressed.
To vote at Election.com, a user has to supply a PIN (Personal Identification Number) which when entered presents a ballot. Once the vote has been made the PIN number is consumed, showing that the individual has voted. The vote is stored in a separate database.
Depending on the degree of security required, for a larger election for example, the voter may be asked to submit personal information in addition to their PIN to validate who they are.
Individual voting sessions are secured by Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Support Protocols and the site uses digital certificates on its servers that are issued through a trusted agency. Votes are encrypted using public and private key infrastructure -- once a vote has been cast and the ballot consumed, the vote is encrypted before it leaves the voter's computer. The only way to decrypt it is at the time of vote calculation, using a private key kept with trusted third party.
"It is a very secure method for conducting elections," stressed Election.com's Taylor.
