The NSW government wants to see a “common national election technology system” created, potentially using a model similar to PEXA, which standardisd electronic property settlement processes nationwide.
In an interim report on technology-assisted voting, the NSW Electoral Commission stated that all states and territories had roughly the same challenges, and so in that context, national coordination made sense.
“A common national election technology system would promote electoral transparency, consistent with Australia’s democratic conventions and values, and provide a consistent electoral experience for citizens, with national privacy, identity and cyber security assurance,” the commission stated.
“The development and operation of this technology would best be undertaken by a standing national elections delivery organisation.
“Its role would include the design, risk assessment and delivery of digital elections platforms, including for voting, for use by all jurisdictions for their elections and referendums.”
The commission suggested that PEXA may be a good model to replicate; as the commission notes, “PEXA was established following a 2011 intergovernmental agreement on national conveyancing to build and operate a single national electronic system for the settling of real property transactions in all Australian states and territories.”
Authentication, using digital identity, also made sense to be nationally coordinated, the NSW commission said.
“Given that most electoral enrolments in Australia are already centralised with the Australian Electoral Commission, a common elector authentication ‘front door’ for technology-assisted voting for all jurisdictions could be developed as a feature of a national technical solution.”
Internet voting scope shrinks
In the interim, the NSW electoral commission thinks it unlikely that internet voting will return to the state with the same level of eligibility as the previous iVote system.
iVote was dumped after a registration glitch left voters unable to cast ballots on election day, resulting in several contests being challenged in the courts.
“Internet voting may be feasible at small scale only from 2027 for NSW state and local government elections,” the NSW commission said.
Any work, it said, “should progress on the assumption that up to 4000 electors who are blind or have low vision would use internet voting and up to 1000 would use operator-assisted telephone voting in 2027.”
iVote usage was much higher than that, because the system was used by people who were interstate on election day (although over 160,000 users in this respect “may have incorrectly claimed to be eligible”, the commission said).
However, such users would no longer be in the scope for internet voting in NSW.
“Wider deployment of internet voting to other elector classes [beyond those who are blind or have low vision] for the 2027 state general election would introduce an unacceptable level of risk to electoral integrity, including risks relating to short lead-times between nomination of candidates and production of ballot papers, technical performance, cyber security and, potentially, disinformation,” the NSW commission said.
“Apart from the former iVote system in NSW, there are no large-scale remote online voting systems operating in jurisdictions with Westminster parliamentary systems.
“Although there appears to be significant global interest in remote internet voting, large-scale adoption is far less common.”
If internet voting is to be revived in NSW at a small scale, a “significant budget commitment” would need to be forthcoming from the state government, no later than 2024-25.
iVote costs came in at $8.1 million in 2019, but the commission noted that “recent increases in information hardware and services costs, coupled with additional cyber security requirements, may significantly increase the investment required.”
The electoral commission also suggested changing NSW laws “to protect, in specified circumstances, the validity of an election result despite technical performance issues with a technology-assisted voting channel.”
This is more possible if the number of system users is more statistically insignificant, though this is still likely to be a contentious suggestion.
The NSW electoral commission is currently taking submissions from interested parties on its interim report.