(Dis-)Trust in E-Voting: New Realities of a Well Known Paradox

Maria Gorbatiuc is a dedicated scientific researcher at Moldova State University, Republic of Moldova. With a strong academic background, she has authored numerous publications both nationally and internationally, contributing to research in Poland, Georgia, Belarus, the UK, North Macedonia, New Zealand, Australia, and Portugal. She has actively participated in prestigious international scientific conferences and training schools across Europe. As a PhD researcher, she brings innovation and theoretical depth to her field, complemented by expertise in training, counseling, and team management. Her work is distinguished by its scientific relevance, originality, and practical applicability. 

Citation: Gorbatiuc, M. (2024). (Dis-)Trust in e-voting: New realities of a well-known paradox. TRUEDEM Blog. https://www.truedem.eu/blog/blog1 

Elections are an indispensable part of the democratic process (Przeworski 1999; Dahl 1971). Through it citizens can elect their representatives, hold governments to account and shape policy making. For years, political scientists have told their students that it doesn’t make a difference whether they vote and what way because one vote won’t make a difference. Our piece is an antidote to that argument. How can we call ourselves a democracy if fewer and fewer people participate in elections? Everyone who seeks to understand today’s politics and tomorrow’s ought to be interested in it and news, we are going to be surprised by how much less involved they are. Democracy in Europe and Moldova faces the disturbing challenge of how to get everyone to take part in their governing. We consider that democracy is a government by the people exercised either directly or through elected representative. Democracy intends legality and legality intends the democratic state with the Power Institutions high level of function, impartial justice system and maintenance of main humanity rights and freedom. But it can be possible some deviations from the harmonious connection between the Law and democracy and the rules of law have narrow group content and deviation the Law from the democratic statutes.

Voting is the process through which citizens can determines their leaders. The quality of voting service has to be maximized for the citizens to trust that their election is counted and the result of voting is accurate and fair. Everybody has a sense of what trust and distrust mean and what they imply in terms of human relations. Although (or maybe because) they are commonly used in everyday life, these concepts have been the focus of wide attention in the social sciences – e.g. how can trust and distrust be fostered? To what extent are they mutually exclusive? – spanning fields as diverse as sociology (Giddens, 1991; Luhmann, 1979; Sztompka, 2003), law (Cross, 2005; Hall, 2002; Tyler, 2001), amongst others.

Nowadays, technology has recently increased in all aspects of life (Kumari, Rathee, & Maheshwari, 2020; Lee Chang, & Berry, 2011; Mostafa, & abdel Jalil, 2022) to the extent that life in the future is called e-life due to the great use of technology in all services.  Thinking about online voting for public elections as a logical progression from online business and political applications makes sense (Musial-Karg, 2022). E-participation and e-voting are becoming political agenda items. Through e-voting it can be avoided human errors by collecting and sorting the electoral papers manually (MELITSKI, & CALISTA, 2016; Musial-Karg, 2022; Olumide, Olutayo, & Adekunle, 2020; Aboelazm, 2023E). The voter can cast his vote from any preferred location, including the office, home, or even a deck chair on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean, using more general technologies like interactive digital TV, the phone, Short Message Service (SMS), or the Internet (Duenas-Cid, Janowski, & Krimmer, 2022; Falck, Gold, & Heblich, 2014). Election organizers have additional opportunities thanks to eMV and especially eDV (Sayed Aboelazm, 2023).

We would like to provide e-voting development overview impact and seeking to balance key electoral principle such as (dis-)trust and how to implement this type of technology in our society to better understanding of e-voting's future development significance, as well as application throughout the world. As about Moldova, at the time being, the Moldovan ballot system consists of a paper-and-stamp (the same as paper-and-pencil) method. But one small step for giant leap to democracy Moldova already did by implementing postal voting in presidential elections 2024 (October 20th) (Gorbatiuc, 2020). According to the Central Election Commission (CEC) data 1344 envelops were received from 1808 sent. This project of postal voting allowed for the Moldovans in six countries to vote such as the USA, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland. There will be no alternative methods for voting and the Diaspora will again have to queue and travel hundreds of km just to vote.

There are at least three strong reasons why we recommend e-voting:

• the poor participation in the core democratic exercise;

• the large number of fellow citizens in the Moldovan Diaspora;

• the constant attempts to rig elections by influencing votes.

We believe that the stability of the electoral framework is paramount to ensure trust in the impartiality of the process. There are “seven steps for the implementation of e-voting” to become a reality and digital transformation in Moldova.

Nowadays, according to our research it’s obviously seen that almost a third of voters trust the candidate. It plays a key role in polarized society where keeping the trust becoming a challenge for authority. Trust is the basis for long-term support and stability.

To trust or to distrust – that is the question to consider: the paradox warrants a thorough examination? We consider that trust and distrust are two distinct and separate constructs, not two ends of a single continuum, both are thus worthy of attention. In common parlance, trust and distrust tend to be regarded as zero-sum opposites, meaning that someone either has trust or distrust in someone else or a given situation. Trust and distrust (and their relation) are ticker concepts that need critical unpacking if we want to understand better how to control their genesis and effects (Duenas-Cid, & Calzati, 2023).

We can conclude, for instance, the introduction of internet voting (e-voting) as an additional voting channel (provided that there is a take-up by voters), especially in an era of sustained levels of distrust. Over the past two decades, we have seen how technological advancements have taken the world by storm.

Trust has been recognized as a mechanism for reducing the complexity of social interaction (Luhmann, 1979). This relation between trust and distrust reveals an interesting paradox: trust can be a source of distrust under certain conditions, and vice versa. For example, the hacktivist group aimed to build trust in the democratic system by creating distrust in the voting machines. Similarly, the legal framework was initially helping to build trust in the voting machines but later became a source of distrust (Duenas-Cid, 2024).

The day is not far when e-voting will be the norm, and people can exercise their franchise via the internet from their own house rather than go to the voting zone without any corruption. But voters must have a substantive reason for trusting that their intentions have been correctly interpreted and recorded, and that their votes have been counted correctly. We should use the future to build the present for everyone’s equity and equality, time is a valuable asset in the rebuilding of trust (Casal Bértoa, 2024).

Electronic voting overcomes the problem of geographic distribution of voters as well as vote administrators. It also reduces the chances of errors in the voting process. However, in order for electronic voting to replace conventional mechanisms, it must provide the whole range of features that conventional voting systems have. Furthermore, due to the inherent lack of security on the Internet, electronic voting systems need to be carefully designed; otherwise these systems become more susceptible to fraud than conventional systems. As Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal (2021), Secretary General for Foreign Affairs of Austria, stated: “Trust has to be earned over and over again.”