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• www.promoteukraine.org • Promote Ukraine • Промуй Україну •
11
DIGITAL
IZATION
DMYTRO KHUTKYY - POLICY LEADER
FELLOW AT THE SCHOOL OF
TRANSNATIONAL GOVERNANCE,
EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE,
FLORENCE, ITALY (1)
Khutkyy and Kristina Avramchen-
ko, in the rst cycle (from 2015)
already as many as 123 commu-
nities (over 91 percent of all sur-
veyed) have introduced either
mixed electronic-paper or exclu-
sively electronic voting for choos-
ing development projects. At the
national level, e-voting has been
carried out for choosing priori-
ties for open government reforms.
As the Secretariat of the Cabinet
of Ministers of Ukraine report-
ed, from 2016 the general public
has been voting online for Open
Government Partnership initia-
tive undertakings. Despite being
non-binding, the results of these
popular votes de facto shaped the
list of commitments later adopted
and implemented by the executive
government.
In a narrower sense, e-voting
was employed for electing rep-
resentatives –that is, for e-elec-
tions. Similarly, Ukrainian citi-
zens have engaged in e-elections
of both community and country-
wide scope. At the municipal lev-
el, since 2018 Kyiv City Council
has ruled that Kyivians elect civil
society organisations for the par-
ticipatory budgeting commission
electronically.
Introduction
Did you know
that popular
e-voting has
been practised in
Ukraine at least
since 2015?
It has been indeed – for various
purposes and at dierent levels of
governance. While electronic vot-
ing can be either oine via elec-
tronic voting devices or online via
the Internet (i-voting), in Ukraine
the former has been used by elect-
ed ocials and the latter by the
public.
In a broader sense, e-voting has
been utilised for choosing poli-
cies. At the local level, it has been
applied for selecting participatory
budgeting community develop-
ment projects – initiatives for im-
proving a community put forward,
deliberated, and decided upon by
its residents, which local authori-
ties are bound to implement. Ac-
cording to a recent 2019 study by
independent researchers Dmytro
E-VOTING IN UKRAINE:
ADVANCEMENTS,
CHALLENGES AND
PERSPECTIVES
E-VOTING IN UKRAINE:
ADVANCEMENTS,
CHALLENGES AND
PERSPECTIVES
• Brussels Ukraïna Review • www.promoteukraine.org •
12
At the state level, according to re-
spective ocial announcements,
since 2015 citizens of Ukraine have
been e-electing representatives for
public councils at the National An-
ti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine
and some other agencies. All these
e-elections were binding.
However, in Ukraine e-vot-
ing has not yet been applied for
electing either members of local
councils or members of the na-
tional parliament.
Visions and designs
Nevertheless, the newly elect-
ed politicians anticipate the
upcoming online elections in
Ukraine. In particular, such am-
bitious plans were voiced by
Mykhailo Fedorov – the Vice
Prime Minister and Minister of
Digital Transformation. In a 2019
interview with the Liga outlet,
he announced that online vot-
ing would be piloted at the next
local elections and full-scale on-
line voting at the next presiden-
tial elections. This innovation
is positioned as part of a larger
“state in smartphone” concept.
Concerns and
solutions
Despite the high-spirited vi-
sions by optimistic advocates
of digitising the voting pro-
cess, its sceptics have voiced
a number of critical remarks.
However, each major critique
can be addressed by a respec-
tive rejoinder.
First, ensuring a widespread
and trustworthy mechanism
for verifying the identities of
voters participating in online
elections is a signicant chal-
lenge. The precise number of
certied digital signatures in
Ukraine is unknown, but it
should exceed 1 million, the
number of public ocials
obliged to submit e-asset dec-
larations. In addition to certi-
ed digital signatures, there
are qualied digital signatures on
microchipped national ID-cards.
Yet few Ukrainian citizens pos-
sess them. As the State Migrations
Service of Ukraine has reported,
by the end of January 2020 it had
issued over 4.3 million of national
ID-cards. This constitutes slightly
over 12 percent of the 35.5 mil-
lion eligible voters in Ukraine,
according to data of the Central
Election Committee of Ukraine.
Besides, as the survey by Factum
Group Ukraine demonstrated, in
late 2019 as many as 71 percent of
residents of Ukraine aged 15 years
and older used the Internet. This
constitutes the identication reli-
ability versus inclusiveness dilem-
ma. It can be resolved by allowing
multiple alternative identication
channels: via digital signature on
a national ID-card, a digital signa-
ture issued by a state agency or a
bank, or through oine identi-
cation at an administrative service
centre and subsequent online vot-
ing there.
Apparently, critics contend
that e-voting raises cybersecurity
concerns. Ukraine’s government
has been that target of multiple
cyberattacks from Russia. For in-
stance, as reported by Radio Svo-
boda, during the 2014 presiden-
tial elections the Central Election
Committee web-site suered from
DDoS-attacks, was hacked, and
its web-site displayed incorrect
election outcomes. To counter
this, Ukraine can adopt Estonia’s
approach to preventing cyber-
threats, such as a highly-secure
ID-card. E-voting can also be
tested on smaller scale, such as
in by-elections to local councils
or primaries for parliamentary
and presidential elections, while
digitalisation can start from a
lower stakes, less controversial,
and more approachable stage
such as, for instance, during vote
counting.
Furthermore, there is the di-
lemma of ensuring a direct and se-
cret ballot and striving to conduct
a remote i-voting. There are risks
of buying votes and pressuris-
ing voters. While this also occurs
during analogue elections, the
absence of supervision in remote
voting amplies these risks. While
with remote e-voting the state can-
not guarantee the right for a direct
and secret ballot, it can mitigate
the risks by granting a voter the
possibility of unlimited changes
of a ballot until the end of election
day and by introducing the back-
up option of oine voting aer
the online one. This would require
a profound legal, nancial, and
technical action.
While with remote
e-voting the state
cannot guarantee
the right for a direct
and secret ballot,
it can mitigate the
risks by granting a
voter the possibility
of unlimited changes
of a ballot until the
end of election day
and by introducing
the backup option of
offline voting after the
online one.
• www.promoteukraine.org • Promote Ukraine • Промуй Україну •
13
The publication of vot-
ing results by each
ballot station online,
combined with
enhanced cyber-secu-
rity, may reduce the
risk of voter abuse.
Moreover, according to a
Razumkov Centre 2019 sur-
vey, there is a strong dis-
trust towards many politi-
cal institutions in Ukraine.
To ensure the legitimacy of
e-voting, persuading the pub-
lic that the e-elections were
performed properly is essen-
tial. Yet the call for enhanced
transparency contradicts the
legal requirement of securing
the condentiality of a secret
ballot. One possible solution
is to publish an open code of
e-voting soware. However,
this does not prevent individ-
ual abuse. Another possible,
though elaborate, solution is
developing an e-voting system
using blockchain technolo-
gy. Its advantages include the
cryptographic protection of in-
formation distributed among a
network of peers. In Ukraine,
there was an unnished exper-
iment of applying blockchain
technology for e-voting within
the E-Vox project. Furthermore,
it is possible to apply the Prêt
à Voter technology, which en-
ables an automatic instant cal-
culation of election results while
allowing any voter to check an
individual vote while also pro-
tecting the secrecy of his or her
vote. In 2017, this high-tech
solution was tested by the NGO
“Electronic Democracy” for
e-elections at a university. Both
blockchain and the Prêt à Vot-
er technologies ensure that no
single party is able to control,
delete, or modify all data and
thereby distort voting results.
Advantages and
perspectives
Even if it is technically possible
to expand e-voting to e-elections
for public oces, why embark on
such an undertaking?
A wider application of e-voting,
including e-elections, assumes
several practical benets. The
commonly posited arguments are
saving constituents’ time (due to vot-
ing remotely instead of going to a bal-
lot station in person) and saving public
funds (due to reducing paper-relat-
ed expenses). It is worth noting that
while exclusively digital voting would
result in lower public expenditure, op-
erating a dual system of digital voting
alongside analogue, in-person voting
will actually increase public expenses
and election committees’ workload.
Despite these concerns, given its
convenience, e-voting is important as
a potential inclusion enabler. Specif-
ically, this might benet Ukrainian
citizens travelling and working
abroad. Although, given the Esto-
nian experience, as analysed by
e-voting scholars Kristjan Vassil,
Mihkel Solvak, Priit Vinkel, Alexan-
der Trechsel, and Michael Alvarez,
such inclusion effects will neces-
sarily require time. The Estonian
experience shows that this might
require several election cycles.
E-voting may potentially have a
positive inuence on political pro-
cesses. By providing instant and reli-
able results, and by publishing open
code, e-voting may possibly increase
electoral transparency. The publica-
tion of voting results by each ballot
station online, combined with en-
hanced cyber-security, may reduce
the risk of voter abuse. Considered
together, this can strengthen elec-
toral legitimacy and increase pub-
lic trust towards elections.
Beyond using e-voting for elect-
ing public ocials, the technology
can be applied for routine policy
making. Thus, (non-)binding e-vot-
ing for local and national policies,
e-referenda, and liquid democra-
cy designs (optional delegating or
casting a vote) can increase the
quality of good governance and
make it more democratic.
In the eurointegration
dimension, the introduc-
tion of e-elections of pub-
lic ocials should contrib-
ute to further EU-Ukraine
integration. In particular,
the EU-Ukraine Association
Agenda contains the short-
term priority of the improve-
ment and harmonisation of
all electoral legislation. There-
fore, more transparent elections
should enhance this strand.
ANNOTATIONS
The views and opinions ex-
pressed are those of the author
and do not necessarily represent
the views and opinions of the Eu-
ropean University Institute (EUI)
or the School of Transnational
Governance.