The Last Reason Why e-voting Will Not Work

There are already tens of arguments against e-voting or e-ballots. The ones who do not know cryptography and technology feel insecure, I don't. There is always a way to set up Anns and Bobs so that everything from the press of a yesno button till summary statistics is true and objective. The main and absolute argument for e-voting is of course, convenience. For some it may even be a more objective way to get the results. But I think, that after numerous experiments, the classic 'go to the voting room and vote' model will prevail. Surprisingly it may end up so that the actual voting is not done with pen and paper but with a voting machine (hopefully not with the hackable ones used in US), but the important part of voting is 'going to somewhere special and voting there'. Actually, no voter identification technology is embedded into the voting terminal, it is done before and is independent of voting. There will be other bits and pieces to this, but generally the above describes it. Now, finally, the last reason(s):

• Ultimately, however good are the identification technologies, it is not possible to control, is the person voting actually the person voting;
• Ultimately, it is not possible to control, how and by what, a person at the very moment of voting is influenced. Consider going to voting as something similar as going to church or to a doctor;

As voting is about control and influence 'in a situation', this makes a huge difference.

• Ultimately, technologically, there is a place and time where the voting result and voter identification information co-exist and there is a higher than 0,01% possibility that the voting will not be anonymous. Ok, it is the least important and probable, but still the 'ultimately' reason.

Everyone is talking about the technology and cryptographic background of e-voting. I think, this is a moving target and is improved over time. AND, this is not the issue about e-voting. What IS important is the social and behavioural models around e-voting. And in this area, research is seriously lacking. And really finally, a hypothesis for thinking: Suppose we have two identical countries. Absolutely identical. Even the flap of the wings of a butterfly is identical in these two countries not to talk about the long-term political preferences of the populations. Suppose one of them is voting the classical way and the other is voting the e-way. What is the difference in the voting results? Lets eliminate also higher participation rates due to accessibility and outcome differences due to that. Lets assume that they prove to be completely honest and transparent ballots as much as it depends on the overall levels of democracy in the twin-countries. Is there a residual difference that is caused only by the different technology used?