IPP Policy Brief 14: “Electronic Voting and Elections: A Matter of Trust” (In portuguese) by Vasco d’Orey states that the most important capital of the free electoral process is trust. Trust is unfortunately a hard currency to accumulate. It takes years to build solid and trusting relationships between us, but it only takes a few moments for everything to collapse.
Given this, any change to the electoral system must take into account its impact on the accumulated trust capital in the system.
The purpose of an election is to translate each voter’s individual intentions into a numerical total of all these preferences. The voting mechanism must be able to make this large-scale translation quickly and at the same time prevent fraud at every stage of the process.
Not only are many different methods known, but many of their limits are benefiting thank to the accumulation of their knowledge over the years.
Regardless of the model chosen, this Policy brief is intended to report that the process must be able to meet the fundamental requirements.