MobileCIT Question 1

“Should mobile EU citizens be allowed to vote online in European Parliament elections?”

What do you think? Should mobile EU citizens be allowed to vote online in European Parliament elections?
Vote here: https://open2vote.eu/mobile-cit/bills/1 (MobileCIT question Nr. 1.)

Background

EU citizens have the right to vote in European Parliament (EP) elections in their Member State of residence (even if that is not their Member State of nationality).(1) Yet, many barriers to exercising this right still exist. These include a lack of accessible information, burdensome registration processes, and deregistration in the Member State of origin.(2)

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)

The collected responses will be used by MobileCIT project partners to lobby for the resolution of the raised issues in the institutions of the European Union and Council of Europe. We will compile the outcome of the voting by February 2024 and inform you about the result!

This article is posted in collaboration with MobileCIT.

Sources

(1) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/?uri=celex:31993L0109
(2) https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/ATAG/2023/739331/EPRS_ATA(2023)739331_EN.pdf
(3) https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpos.2023.982558/full
(4) https://www.france24.com/en/france/20220527-mapped-expats-kick-off-french-legislative-elections-with-online-voting
(5) https://skytte.ut.ee/sites/default/files/2023-02/E_voting_in_Estonia_Solvak_Vassil_2016.pdf
(6) https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/five-takeaways-from-the-estonian-elections-where-security-trumped-inflation-by-a-landslide/