E-voting in Hungary in 2022?

Electronic voting is nowadays a hot topic in many countries. Obviously, it would make participation easier in the elections, but an entirely secure e-voting system is hard to design. As Daily News Hungary reported, Hungarian opposition parties have already proposed e-voting in the parliament, but government did not support the initiation. Jobbik, the biggest opposition party in Hungary has warmed up the proposal again.

E-voting risky?

In fact, not only Jobbik, but also civil societies and Liberals Party have also proposed e-voting before. According to Róbert László, psephologist and analyst of Political Capital, a Hungarian think-tank, apart from the advantages e-voting has many risks, as well. His opinion is based on Márton Naszódi’s standpoint. The IT-expert published a paper on the topic in which he claims that

no one can guarantee absolute secrecy and verifiability at the same time.

On the one hand, it violates anonymity if one can only vote after an identification process enabling vote-attachment to persons. However, on the other hand, if identification is taken out of the system, results might be hard to be verified. Naszódi claims that, according to the literature on e-voting, it is highly doubtful that one can create a system which is anonym enough and at the same time verifiable, as well.

The Estonian example

However, according to Dóra Dúró, Jobbik MP, e-voting is not a unique Hungarian idea. For example, in Estonia people can vote electronically since 2005 and the system functioned well during the 2009 European parliament elections, too. Thus,

Jobbik would enable e-voting in the 2022 parliamentary elections as a complementary opportunity for citizens.