Pro

Online voting could facilitate the participation of mobile EU citizens in EP elections.(3) Citizens could vote directly from home instead of going to a polling station. They could easily get information in their own language, instead of having to navigate through registration procedures and voting information at the polling station in a foreign language. Online voting for mobile EU citizens has already been tested in practice: France allows expats as the only group of the electorate to vote online.(4)

Against

Academic studies show that the introduction of online voting does not guarantee an increased turnout. In one of the few countries where online voting is a reality – Estonia – the turnout has not grown.(5) E-voting also requires a lot of resources committed to the system’s reliability, in particular, to secure the vote and to verify identification.(6)

This article is posted in collaboration with MobileCIT.