In the upcoming federal election of 2022, will online voting be an option?

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of our daily activities—including work, shopping, and other fundamental life functions—moved online.

In the first federal election that has taken place in Australia since the COVID-19 pandemic, you may be curious about the possibility of casting your vote online.

Is it possible to cast my ballot for the federal election online?

To get right to the point, the answer is no, you will not be able to vote online for the federal election in 2022.

In the history of federal elections in Australia, there has never been a way to cast a ballot using the internet on a personal device.  

However, this does not mean that you are prevented from voting online in any election held in Australia.

Consider how the events of the Australian federal election in 2022 transpired.

Online voting has been made available for some of the local council elections in NSW.

The only state or territory in Australia that allows voters to cast ballots online is New South Wales, and even then, it has only been implemented in a limited number of elections.  

Since 2011, the electronic voting system iVote has been utilized in state elections, and more recently, it has been utilized in elections for local governments.

Online or over the phone, eligible voters in New South Wales can cast their ballots using this platform, which is managed by the state's Electoral Commission.

Following a successful legal challenge on behalf of blind and low-vision voters, the eligibility requirements were expanded to now include the following:

• People who believe that having their address listed on an electoral roll that is accessible to the public could compromise their safety are known as silent voters.
• People who live more than 20 kilometers away from a polling station are not allowed to vote in that election.
• Those who will be traveling on the day of the election
• Those voters who are unable to cast their ballots in person because of a physical or mental impairment

Additionally, the system was utilized to a greater extent for voting in elections that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, the system is not without flaws, and earlier this month, the Supreme Court of New South Wales ruled that three local government elections that were held in December 2021 were invalid due to a malfunction in the iVote system.

In Singleton, Kempsey, and Shellharbour, there were a number of invalid ballots cast. ( ABC News: Lauren Pezet )

During the election, there were a total of 54 invalid iVote ballots cast in Shellharbour, 55 in Singleton, and 34 in Kempsey, according to an analysis that was commissioned by the NSW Electoral Commission.

The Electoral Commission submitted a petition to the Supreme Court requesting that the election results be thrown out "to preserve the credibility of the voting process."

It was ordered that the bill for holding the necessary re-elections should be paid for by the NSW Electoral Commission.

In addition to this, the commission announced that iVote would not be used in the 2023 state election because the software would be rewritten.

Where does this leave the rest of Australia?

Electronic assisted voting is available for people in Queensland who meet certain requirements, such as those who cannot vote without assistance due to a disability or those who live more than 20 kilometers from a polling booth. However, online voting is prohibited by electoral laws in the state of Queensland.  

In those instances, there is a two-step process for voting via telephone that is designed to ensure voters' privacy while they cast their ballots.  

There is no provision in the electoral laws of Victoria for citizens to cast ballots online, either for local or state elections.

Although Tasmania has never had a voting system that was conducted entirely online, the state formerly utilized a method known as "express voting."

Express voting, which was similar to sending an email, was used for state elections for the House of Assembly and Legislative Council between the years of 2010 and 2018, but it was discontinued after a cybersecurity review in 2018 revealed that it did not provide an adequate level of safety and security.  

Voters in South Australia are also unable to cast ballots electronically.

Voters were only able to register for a postal vote in the most recent state election if the request was made with sufficient time for it to be returned in advance of polling day. This was due to the fact that a large portion of the population was either ill with COVID-19 or isolating as a close contact.

Those individuals who were placed in quarantine within a few days of the election were able to retrieve their ballot papers from a COVID testing station.

Since the state elections in 2017, voters in Western Australia have had the option of casting their ballots electronically, although this option is only available in certain circumstances, such as for voters with accessibility issues.  

Voters who are qualified to participate in the election first have a ballot paper read to them, and then they cast their vote by selecting an option using a computer keyboard.  

According to Martin Drum, a senior politics lecturer at Notre Dame University, between 2,000 and 3,000 people were eligible to use this system, and they could do so during pre-poll voting as well as on election day.

The electronic voting system that has been used in every election held in the ACT since 2001 requires voters to authenticate their votes on a computer located at a voting terminal using an e-voting card.

On a public network such as the internet, votes are neither cast nor transmitted in any way.

Electronic voting has been enthusiastically adopted by the territory, and a limited form of online voting has even been introduced for Canberrans living outside of the territory.  

At the election for the territory in 2020, seventy percent of voters cast their ballots using a computer at one of the fifteen special polling booths spread across the city.  

According to Damian Cantwell, the electoral commissioner of the ACT, computer-assisted voting led to the lowest-ever number of informal votes and the fastest-ever final result. On the other hand, he stated that voting for everyone through the internet was not an option because there were "significant complexities and extremely high risks, including significant cyber risks."

The Northern Territory's electoral commission made a submission in 2018 to introduce electronic voting, despite the fact that the territory's electoral laws have been reviewed in recent years, with previous criteria for postal and early voting being dropped in an effort to encourage more Territorians to exercise their right to vote. On the other hand, that has not yet transpired.

Therefore, the option to vote online is not currently available for any of the elections taking place in the territory, including those for the state or federal councils.

What are some things that Australia can pick up from other countries?

Since 2007, registered voters in Estonia have been able to participate in local, national, and European elections by casting their ballots online using either their own personal computers or mobile phones that are equipped with an ID card reader.

It continues to be the only country in the world in which voters can cast ballots via the internet.

The United States of America, Brazil, the Philippines, India, Namibia, and Mongolia are among the many other countries that have adopted the use of electronic voting machines.

The use of electronic voting became a contentious issue in the United States during the presidential election of 2020, when it was claimed by the departing president Donald Trump, without any supporting evidence, that the machines cost him millions of votes.  

The courts, state governments, and members of Trump's own former administration have all ruled against President Trump's allegations of voter fraud. ( Reuters: Jonathan Ernst )

The country uses a variety of electronic voting systems, including direct recording electronic machines, in which voters cast their ballots on a machine, and the machine records the results of the vote.

Optical scanners are yet another variety; with these, a voter marks their ballot on a piece of paper and then inserts it into a machine that tallies the votes.  

Another kind are the ballot marking devices, in which a voter marks their vote on a piece of paper using an electronic system, and then the machine prints out the ballot on paper. Following that, the ballot paper is scanned using an optical device.  

A government with a majority of Labor's support was formed.

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