Like many other democracies, the United States is addressing the need to improve its election process to ensure that all citizens can vote freely, easily, and securely. An election expert describes the actions the U.S. government has taken to facilitate the casting of ballots across the country, and he discusses the promise and pitfalls of electronic voting systems, as technology moves into the mainstream of election administration. Paul S. DeGregorio is the former chair of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, and he has worked for 22 years as an election expert in more than 20 countries.

During the past decade the world has experienced a significant focus on the process of voting. Many countries, rich and poor, developed and not-so-developed, are using new technologies to select their leaders. Voters in India, the world's largest democracy, cast their ballots using electronic push-button technology, while voters in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, present a modern identification card with photo and thumbprint when obtaining their ballot. Indeed, in Estonia (E-stonia, as they like to be known) voters can now use a smart card to cast their ballot over the Internet from anywhere in the world.

In the United States more than 90 percent of votes are cast or counted electronically. Every polling place is now required by law to have a voting device that allows people with disabilities to vote privately and independently. Thus, a voter who is blind can put on earphones and touch a screen or buttons to advance and vote the ballot — in private. The United States is the only country in the world with this type of mandate.

Voters with other special needs, such as those who do not speak English as a first language, are also helped by this new technology. In Los Angeles County, California, ballots are provided in eight languages. It is clear that new technologies can be a major enabler for those voters who are challenged by physical handicaps or language barriers.

The majority of these new election technologies, and more, have been introduced within the past 10 years. And each year more countries introduce new methods to make voting accessible to all segments of society.

Do these new technologies help to achieve greater voter access and to curb poor turnouts? Are they trusted by all segments of the population? Or do they introduce new problems and provide an unfair advantage for certain voters? These are important issues now being debated within individual countries and in the international community.

Improving the U.S. Election Process

In the United States the election process received dramatic attention at home and abroad after the 2000 presidential election when, during a six-week period, no one was sure who won the presidency. The terms "hanging," "pregnant," and "dimpled" chad became part of the worldwide lexicon. The administration of elections in the United States has come a long way since that watershed event. In 2002 the U.S. Congress passed the historic Help America Vote Act, known as HAVA, which, for the first time, provided significant federal assistance to the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories to improve the election process. In fact, there have been more election laws and regulations promulgated in the United States during the past seven years than in the previous 200 years of American history.

Much like the Netherlands, England, Japan, and several other countries, all elections within the United States are local; that is, they are administered by local officials who make most of the decisions on what method of voting is to be used by voters in their jurisdiction. HAVA gave state election officials more authority to oversee and regulate local entities. In most states, a secretary of state, a state official elected on a partisan ticket, is the chief election authority. In a few states, including New York and Illinois, a bipartisan board of elections oversees the voting process. The United States is unique in the fact that more than 70 percent of local election authorities are elected on a partisan basis, with job titles such as county clerk, county auditor, and supervisor of elections. These officials are held accountable by the voters every four years.

The Help America Vote Act created a federal agency, the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), to provide a national focus on election administration and, for the first time in American history, appropriated more than $3 billion in federal funds to improve the voting process. The EAC [http://www.eac.gov], which began its work in late 2003, is a four-member body of two Democrats and two Republicans, appointed by the president and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. I was among the first appointees to the EAC and served as chairman in 2006.

In addition to distributing funds, the EAC also set new standards for the use of technology in voting, standards that are being followed closely by other countries. Working with the National Institute of Science and Technology [http://www.vote.nist.gov], the EAC established significant new voting system guidelines that focused on security and human factors. These guidelines are helping the states ensure the integrity and usability of the electronic devices that are utilized by millions of voters in every election. In addition, the EAC has focused on the management side of election technology and is producing several important documents designed to help election officials manage the important elements of e-voting systems, including logic and accuracy testing. In recent years the Council of Europe [http://www.coe.int] also has embarked on a project to provide similar standards for e-voting systems, since many European nations are moving toward the use of electronic voting devices.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for all election officials is the training of poll workers and voters on the new voting technologies. In the United States, where the average age of poll workers is 72, the introduction of electronic devices that have computer memory cards that have to be checked and moved has resulted in a shortage of the 1.3 million workers that are required to conduct a nationwide election. Perhaps the United States might follow the lead of Belgium, where 18-year-olds are conscripted to run the polls.

Is Internet Voting in Our Future?

With the increasing penetration of the Internet throughout the world, and certainly within many countries, e-democracy is a concept that is beginning to take hold and spread rapidly. Like the private sector, candidates, political parties, and governments all are utilizing the Internet to get their message to the public — and to have the public respond to them. Several countries, including Estonia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and England, now allow their citizens to cast ballots via the Internet. In local elections held in May 2007 in Swindon, England, using secure technology developed by Everyone Counts [http://www.everyonecounts.com], voters could cast their ballot by telephone, over the Internet, at public libraries, by mail, by paper ballot, or by using any one of 300 laptop computers placed at 65 locations throughout the borough. It was one of the most ambitious — and successful — voting pilots ever sponsored by the British government.

Living in a global and mobile society, citizens of any country who are living abroad face difficult challenges to participate in elections. This fall, to meet that challenge, Australian military voters will cast their ballot for parliament over the Internet. The estimated 6 million Americans abroad have had a difficult time casting their ballots, with most having to use a cumbersome postal process to exercise their right to vote. The Overseas Vote Foundation [http://www.overseasvotefoundation.org] and the EAC have estimated that more than one in four of these citizens who attempt to vote are not having their ballots counted. Efforts by the U.S. Federal Voting Assistance Program [http://www.fvap.gov] to improve the process have helped, but a recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office [http://www.gao.gov] indicates much more needs to be done.

With the United States' most popular television show, American Idol, experiencing more votes cast in four hours (73 million) than the number cast for the winner of the 2004 U.S. presidential election (62 million), it is not hard to figure that younger Idol voters will demand the use of some type of mobile technology when they are old enough to cast presidential ballots.

Along with the increased use of technology in elections have come increased scrutiny and skepticism about electronic voting. While Americans have been using electronic voting devices to cast their ballots since the late 1980s, it has only been since the passage of HAVA and the spread of e-voting across the United States and the world that many groups have organized to question or even oppose the use of electronic voting devices, particularly those without any type of paper trail [http://www.verifiedvoting.com]. In Ireland, where the hand-counting of preferential ballots can take up to a week, an attempt to introduce e-voting to speed the process ended in failure.

International institutions and other organizations involved in monitoring and assessing elections, such as the Office of Democratic Initiatives and Human Rights of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [http://www.osce.org]; IFES, formerly the International Foundation for Election Systems [http://www.ifes.org]; the Carter Center [http://www.cartercenter.org]; and Electionline [http://www.electionline.org], have had to develop new methodologies to determine whether elections involving e-voting are free and fair. It is one thing to watch paper ballots counted by hand; it is entirely another to monitor the electronic capture of a vote.

The new election technology sweeping across our collective democracies has certainly empowered voters, led to increased participation, and, in many cases, enhanced transparency by reporting results before they could be changed. However, has it increased trust in the results? That is a question that remains to be answered as election reform and the use of new technology continue to be debated throughout the world. There is no question, however, that technology will continue to enhance the way we vote — as it continues to enhance our daily lives.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. government.