Prospects for introduction of electronic election process in Ukraine

Відповідно до статі 69 Конституції України народне волевиявлення здійснюється через вибори, референдуми та iншi форми безпосередньо демократ, а частиною першою статі 38 Конституції України громадянам надано право брати участь у всеукраїнському та місцевих референдумах.

З прийняттям Виборчого кодексу в 2019 році було встановлено зовсім нові правила підрахунку голосів. Цi нововведення вперше були застосовані на практиці на місцевих виборах в жовтні 2020 року.

Основним недоліком нової системи е підрахунок голосів виборців. Тут слід звернути увагу на те, що встановлення результатів виборів займає дуже тривалий час. Тривалість даного процесу зумовлене різними факторами. Зокрема, 25 жовтня 2020 на України проводилися відразу 4 види місцевих виборів - вибори до обласної ради, вибори до районної ради, вибори міського голови i вибори до міської / сільської ради.

На думку авторів, одним iз шляхів вирішення даної проблеми е введення електронного голосування.

Ключовi слова: демократія, безпосередня демократія, виборча система, вибори, електрони вибори, голосування, пряме голосування, електронне голосування.

Abstract

According to Article 69 of the Constitution of Ukraine, popular will is exercised through elections, referendums and other forms of direct democracy, and part one of Article 38 of the Constitution of Ukraine (hereinafter - the Constitution, the Basic Law) gives citizens the right to participate in all-Ukrainian and local referendums.

One of the system-forming elements of the democratic political process is the institution of political elections. The formation of this institute reproduces the historical path of a long and controversial search by society for a better model of public administration.

With the adoption of the Electoral Code in 2019, completely new rules for counting votes were established. These innovations were first put into practice in local elections in October 2020.

The main disadvantage of the new system is the counting of votes. It should be noted here that the establishment of the election results takes a very long time. The duration of this process is due to various factors. In particular, on October 25, 2020, 4 types of local elections were held in Ukraine at once - elections to the regional council, elections to the district council, elections of the mayor and elections to city / village councils.

According to the authors, one of the ways to solve this problem is to introduce electronic voting.

Keywords: democracy, direct democracy, electoral system, elections, electronic elections, voting, direct voting, electronic voting.

The transition of countries to the use of new technologies requires a full-scale reform of the legal system on the basis of principles, standards and opportunities that are emerging at the global level. This poses new challenges for experts in the field of suffrage.

Stunning results have been achieved through electronic voting, a combination of different types of electoral systems, but the lack of effective guarantees to prevent corruption during voting, unprofessional staffing and technical obsolescence of the election procedure undermine the nature and application of suffrage and fair counting.

Given the successful experience of foreign countries in the introduction of electronic electoral process and the gradual introduction of electronic technology in some elements of electoral procedures, the study of the possibility of introducing electronic electoral process as the main direction of improving Ukraine's electoral system is extremely important.

Similar issues have been the subject of research in the works of such scientists as Y. Vasilevich, N. Wiener, V. Vernadsky, I. Lopushinsky, L. Malyshenko, N. Rashevsky, K. Sarkisova, A. Semenov, V.Trukha- nov, R. Hartley, K. Shannon, J. Schreider and others.

However, despite the large number of authors-re- searchers in this field, this area remains insufficiently regulated, including due to the rapid development of electronic technologies.

Given all the above, the purpose of the study is to analyse the possibilities of introducing an electronic election process in the context of the main direction of improving the electoral system of Ukraine.

There are different definitions of democracy and its values in the scientific and journalistic literature. But given that elections are an instrument of democracy (although democracy is not limited to elections), it is worth focusing on some democratic values that indicate their importance and binding nature in the electoral process, which are combined and embodied with appropriate electoral completeness. , namely:

1) citizenship and developed civil status - elevate a person, civilize him, form an order based on freedom and responsibility;

2) human rights and freedoms - are protected by the Constitution, which should also limit the power of the government in an attempt to violate them;

3) freedom of conscience (or religious preferences and beliefs) - indicates the individual choice of man and the prohibition of any interference, whether the state or other people;

4) human dignity as a component of the authority of the citizen, his self-esteem and respect for others, the birth and condition of freedom of a free man. It forces to oppose any oppression of freedom, to stand in the way of violation of the principles and foundations of democracy;

5) free and impartial human self-determination - the absence of any influence on ideological, religious or other human preferences;

6) privacy of a person's personal life - the ability to define one's own life and existence independently of others, no one has the right to interfere in private affairs that do not relate to public human activity;

7) civil association - trust, mutual support, readiness to act jointly and in concert to protect social interests - is a solid foundation for the existence of a democratic society;

8) social order - stability, order, security, welfare - the need of most people to improve the quality of life [1].

According to Article 69 of the Constitution of Ukraine, popular will is exercised through elections, referendums and other forms of direct democracy, and part one of Article 38 of the Constitution of Ukraine gives citizens the right to participate in all-Ukrainian and local referendums.

One of the system-forming elements of the democratic political process is the institution of political elections. The formation of this institution reproduces the historical path of a long and controversial search by society for a better model of public administration.

With the adoption of the Electoral Code in 2019, completely new rules for counting votes were established. These innovations were first put into practice in the October 2020 local elections.

The main disadvantage of the new system is the counting of votes. Having personal experience in the precinct election commission, I would like to draw attention to the fact that the amendments to the election legislation, which regulated the possibility of a citizen to vote for the organization of a political party and at the same time for the respective candidate in the territorial constituency. self-government, where the number of voters is more than 10 thousand) are positive in terms of the fact that the community can choose its representative, but on the other hand in the practice of determining the election results takes a very long time.

The duration of this process is determined by various factors, firstly, the fact that on October 25, 2020 in Ukraine were held 4 types of local elections - regional council elections, district council elections, mayoral elections and city / village council elections. At each polling station, on average, about 1,800 people vote, including a turnout of 30-40 percent and about 700 elections take place in each polling station. This means that members of the precinct election commission process 2,800 ballots.

Secondly, each ballot must be processed several times, because first you need to count the votes cast for the territorial list of the party organization, and then for a particular candidate.

Thus, the main problems of the domestic election process are the low political culture of society, the lack of healthy political competition, as well as the procedure for counting votes.

First, it should be noted that on July 8, 2017, the Order of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine №797-r approved the Concept for the Development of Electronic Democracy in Ukraine and the action plan for its implementation.

The purpose of this Concept is to form political, organizational, technological and ideological conditions for the development of e-democracy in Ukraine, which is characterized by broad involvement of citizens in communication, cooperation with public authorities, control over them, participation in policymaking, development of self-organization and self-government. Trust in the subjects of power; harmonization of the standards of the state policy of the specified sphere with the international, in particular European, standards. Implementation of the Concept is planned for the period up to 2020 [2].

Currently, the most developed tools of e-democracy in Ukraine are e-petitions and participation budgets, or budgets of public initiatives.

E-democracy is a form of democracy in which citizens participate in government and local self-government through electronic (online) tools and services and are full partners in shaping the people's agenda, which becomes the basis of policy. Among such tools are those that best meet the time, needs and demands of citizens. These are, for example, mobile applications, instead of paper appeals or telephone communications, communication platforms of inquiries, portals that work on the principle of "single window", instead of dozens of links to various government services in the field of e-democracy and more [3].

The advantage of electronic voting over traditional voting is due to several important reasons. First, it helps to reduce state budget expenditures that are directly or indirectly related to the election process. The money saved as a result of the use of electronic voting can be used by the state for other needs - for example, for the development of education and health care.

Secondly, the possibility of physical pressure on the will of citizens is minimized, and such phenomena as forgery of paper ballots are physically impossible.

Third, the number of errors in the electoral process caused by a purely human factor is offset. An important factor is the expansion of voting opportunities for people with disabilities [3].

According to political scientist O. Minakov, electronic voting worked well in Estonia. However, in other civilized countries of Europe and the United States are in no hurry to use electronic voting [4].

The potential of informatization can be useful in politics, especially during elections. There are two key issues that negatively affect the voting process - insufficient voter turnout and non-transparent counting process.

Both can be minimized by replacing the work of election commissions with computers. Online voting has already been tested by a number of countries during elections at various levels. Among them are Great Britain and Canada. One of the most striking examples of the use of online voting was the parliamentary elections in Estonia in May 2011.

Electronic voting involves the integration of electronic technologies for collecting, transmitting and counting votes. In practice, electronic voting can be conducted remotely using a personal gadget. Voters can also visit a specially designated polling station where several computers will be located.

However, there are a number of shortcomings that may actually threaten the procedures and democratic principles of electronic voting. These include:

1) security - this is a priority when creating an online voting system is to ensure the safe operation of the software. It is almost impossible to completely protect yourself from viruses and hacker attacks. The slightest threats can be dangerous when it comes to deciding the fate of the state. Hackers are likely to be able to find ways to change election data or disrupt the counting process. With this in mind, it should be understood that in the implementation of the online voting system you need to tune in to the permanent analysis and work on updating security systems. The use of centralized databases on which voting results are stored is especially dangerous. Therefore, some experts advise to study the possibility of using Blockchain, which would make it impossible to attack all the votes received as a result of the election;

2) anonymity - complete secrecy is guaranteed in the voting at polling stations in the polling station. No one has the opportunity to "spy" the voice. This will obviously become impossible when voting from personal gadgets, which increases the risk of manipulation [5].

In our opinion, since the longest process is the calculation of election results, first of all, it is worth considering the possibility of introducing electronic technologies in this process.

It is worth noting that on March 7, 2018 in the West African country of Sierra Leone, the presidential election was held for the first time using blockchain technology in the voting system.

A blockchain is a secure and distributed database in which information is represented by chains of consecutive blocks. These blocks are stored on the computers of all users involved in the formation of the database. In the blockchain, each new block stores information about the previous ones, which serves as a kind of protection of the chain of blocks from forgery.

The Swiss startup Agora, which provided a private blockchain, took part in the run-up to the election. According to the developer of the system Leonardo Gam- mar, voting using the blockchain is completely anonymous.

Anonymous votes / ballots are recorded on the Agora blockchain and made available to any party interested in reviewing, counting and verifying, a record of each vote being stored in the blockchain, which will be available for download and study after the election.

The use of blockchain in elections further reduces the cost of paper ballots, helps reduce corruption in the voting process, eliminates human error and quick public access to election results (announce results more quickly), and helps make elections fair, transparent and verifiable [6].

Thus, the introduction of new technologies in the electoral process can be one of the steps to modernize the system of public administration in general. The experience of foreign countries (USA, France, Estonia) shows that such a process is a requirement for the effective functioning of democracy in the modern world.

The progressive development of state institutions makes their activities more transparent and accessible to citizens, which, in turn, helps to strengthen the authority of the authorities in the eyes of the population and eradicate the phenomenon of legal nihilism.

In our opinion, since the longest process is the calculation of election results, first of all, it is worth considering the possibility of introducing electronic technologies in this process.

It is also advisable to consider the possibility of using blockchain technology during the introduction of the electronic election process.

people will referendums electronic voting

References

1. Барабашев Г.В. Непосредственная демократия в СССР. М. Знание, 1984. 321 с.

2. Розпорядження Кабінету Mінистрів Украйни від 8 липня 2017 р. №797-р. «Про схвалення Концепції розвитку електронної демократа в України та плану заходів щодо пп реалiзацiп». Урядовий кур'єр (оф. видання). 17.11.2017 № 217.

3. Е-демокрапя

4. Демократія доступна чи безпечна: українцям можуть дозволити голосувати поштою та в Інтернеті

5. Як онлайн-голосування допомагає зменшити фальсифікації на виборах.

6. У Сьерра-Леоне відбулися вибори президента з використанням технологи блокчейну.

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