Democracy at the one-click distance: Is electronic voting the best option for Moldova?

Abstract

Electronic voting, known as e-voting, has become increasingly popular in our fast developing technology-driven world. Hence, the Republic of Moldova is a source country of migrants, a significant number of citizens reside abroad. Therefore in most of cases Moldovan citizens have to cast their vote in other countries when Moldova has to hold its elections. Presidential elections from 2016 showed that a poorly organized electing process could lead to violations of constitutional political rights. Hundreds of citizens that travelled a long journey to London, Bologna, Milano and other cities, where polling stations were located, were not able to cast their vote because election officials did not send enough ballot papers. For a country with a numerous Diaspora, e-voting could be a solution for all problems that Moldovans have related to the exercising of voting right. The process is seductively simple, but it is also shockingly vulnerable to different problems - from software failure to malicious hacking - and also requires some special conditions for its implementation. This paper aims to provide an insight into the issues of e-voting, and the debate of pros and cons surrounding it, in order to assess if this solution is the best way to go for Moldova.