“E-voting and e-banking are not the same thing”

E-voting has mainly come under fire owing to security concerns. Will e-voting ever be secure?

Security can never be completely watertight. Any electronic process can be hacked or corrupted. However, the safeguards that we are putting in place mean that any attempt to hack would, firstly, require an inordinate amount of time and effort, and, secondly, not go unnoticed. The aim is to ensure the highest possible level of safety as we do with aircraft or nuclear power plants. Strictly speaking, if you are looking for absolute safety you should never board an aeroplane.

Many voters in the "Fifth Switzerland" think that the security concerns are misplaced. They can use e-banking and access e-government services, where the level of risk is considered acceptable. Why not e-voting?

E-banking and e-voting are not the same thing. Whereas e-banking consists of individual client-server interactions, e-voting relates to an entire system. Any damage would be far greater. Even the mere suspicion of votes being hacked is bad for the credibility of our democratic system. Hence, we hold e-voting to much higher security standards than any other electronic system. This has made us less than popular among potential system providers.

Postal voting is popular, but that can be manipulated as well. And several thousand postal votes are rendered invalid each time, because voters failed to sign their ballot papers, for example.

Your comparison is a bit too simplistic. You can manipulate postal votes here and there, but rarely on a large scale. The concern with e-voting is that someone could hack into the server and change the entire outcome of the vote. Critics are right to say that we should remain wary when it comes to our democratic processes. We therefore have to explain to people what we are doing to make e-voting as secure as possible.

Aren’t there any alternatives to e-voting that would enable Swiss Abroad to exercise their legal right to vote? What about sending voting papers electronically?

E-dispatch is not a good idea in my view. It is certainly less secure than a fully verifiable e-voting system. And it would only be of use to Swiss Abroad whose post is too slow for sending voting papers both ways but quick enough for sending them one way. E-voting was not only meant as an innovation for expats, as you know. Through e-voting, we can finally ensure voter secrecy for Switzerland’s 350,000 blind or partially sighted people. E-dispatch is no use to them.

Then what about keeping things simple and voting at an embassy instead?

When I used to live in Moscow, I was able to hand my voting envelope to the diplomatic courier. But that is not an option if you live in Vladivostok or Irkutsk. You would have to fly to Moscow each time you wanted to cast your vote. Another thing that has been suggested is nominating a proxy in Switzerland who will receive your ballot paper and fill it in according to how you want to vote. But you cannot vote in secret that way. Would the Swiss Abroad really want that? Of course, we are always open to making improvements. For example, we extended the deadline for returning voting papers by one week. We could also start to think about alternatives if e-voting was ever ditched for good.

Could a dedicated constituency for the "Fifth Switzerland" be another alternative?

You would need to change the constitution for that. We have 760,000 Swiss who live abroad. Anyone can launch a popular initiative if they want to. But that won’t solve the problem of voting papers not arriving in time, I am afraid.

The complaints from the "Fifth Switzerland" are probably less to do with voting and more to do with the feeling that they are being treated unfairly. Essentially, the problem is that not all Swiss can actually exercise their voting rights to the full.

I understand the frustration of those who feel disenfranchised. However, postal voting was introduced with the caveat that there is no guarantee of voting papers arriving on time. I remember because I used to be head of the Service for the Swiss Abroad at the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. We cannot repeat the vote if the Brazilian post office fails to deliver the voting envelopes on time. Nevertheless, we do have a very democratic voting system here in Switzerland. Our expatriate communities continue to have political rights, even though some expatriates have been based abroad for generations. Maybe that is worth mentioning too.