The e-government paradigm became an essential path for governments to reach citizens and businesses and to improve service and public performance. One of the important tools used in political and administrative venues is e-voting, where ICT tools are used to facilitate the process of voting for electing representatives and making decisions. The integrity and image of such applications won't be maintained unless strict measures on security and authenticity are applied. This chapter explores the e-voting process, reviews the authentication techniques and methods that are used in this process and proposed in the literature, and demonstrates few cases of applying e-voting systems from different countries in the world. Conclusions and proposed future work are stated at the end of the chapter.
TopE-Voting Systems
Electronic government is defined as using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to enhance government’s operations, provide suitable services to citizens, and improve citizens’ participation (World Bank, 2007; Yanqing, 2010; Abu-Shanab, 2012). Mason (2011) emphasized the notion of citizen’s participation in democratic life, while others related e-government to the provision of information and knowledge to make suitable decisions in political life (Lee, Chang & Berry, 2011). In their pursuit toward improved accountability to citizens (Carter & Belanger, 2004), and improved public service quality (Irani, Al-Sebie & Elliman, 2006), governments try to implement new technologies in all aspects of their operations. E-voting is one of the essential applications especially in the election process.
E-voting is the most researched topic in the area of e-government, although it is not devoted to political cause only. Voting is a needed process in administrative areas, where a decision is needed based on some alternatives. Examples of such applications are used in group decision support systems (GDSS) and policy/agenda setting initiatives. E-voting is defined as using ICT to conduct voting (Buchsbaum, 2005). E-voting, as a democratic activity, includes the voter, the registration authority and a tallying authority, where an electronic system is used to cast votes (Kumar & Walia, 2011a). Research indicated that even with traditional voting systems, using information systems to count votes is considered an e-voting application (Remmert, 2004).