- On Sunday, the first round of municipal elections was marked by a record for abstention.
- The second round, scheduled for Sunday, could be canceled.
- The implementation of online voting presents several obstacles
A democratic solution to the coronavirus? Sunday, the first round of the municipal elections was marked by a record of abstention (around 55%). Faced with the spread of the epidemic on French territory, the executive could postpone the second round of the poll scheduled for this Sunday. To avoid canceling the election, is an Internet voting solution possible?
A system planned in France… for legislative elections abroad
Internet voting is provided for in the electoral code for the designation of representatives of French nationals living abroad during legislative and consular elections. A French citizen residing abroad and registered on a consular electoral list can therefore in principle vote on the Internet after "having filled in a valid email address and telephone number so that the administration can send him [his] identifier ( by email) and [his] password (by SMS) ”, specifies the site of the Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs.
The voter can then connect to the voting interface using a computer, tablet or smartphone to vote. But the ministry's website clearly states that this "voting method is not open for other elections (presidential, European, referendum)".
A device with uncertain security
In addition to the absence of a legal framework for a national ballot, the implementation of an electronic vote this Sunday for the municipal authorities seems all the more improbable that the device does not seem completely secure. In March 2017, Jean-Marc Ayrault, then Minister of Foreign Affairs of François Hollande, announced the cancellation of electronic voting for French citizens abroad for the 2017 legislative elections, not without controversy. The reason ? A risk of hacking highlighted by an audit of experts a month earlier, explained Le Monde .
“We did not have a satisfactory authentication solution on the platform under development and above all we had identified a particular context of a sharp increase in the threat to the electoral process as had just been experienced during the American elections . We wanted at all costs to avoid generating distrust in electronic voting, "said a report from the National Information Systems Security Agency in late 2017.
Beyond security issues, the implementation of electronic voting for several million voters seems difficult to implement a few days before the deadline.
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- Vote
- Coronavirus
- epidemic
- Municipal
- Elections