The online citizen consultation in Bruges reached ten times more people than an ordinary consultation.
This is proof for the organizer, the Civic Power platform, that we can reach a wider audience with digital tools.
For this association, online voting would thus provide a solution to the abstention of young people during electoral deadlines.
The beginnings of electronic voting?
The city of Bruges, in the suburbs of Bordeaux, has just organized an online citizen consultation, with the Civic Power platform, an association which campaigns for online voting and which offers secure mobile voting solutions for companies, associations or communities, in particular via its Bordeaux start-up Votelab.
The municipal team of this town of 18,000 inhabitants has made citizen democracy "a strong axis" of its mandate, explains the first deputy Isabelle Desbordes.
“In the midst of the health crisis, we opted for an online consultation in order to help us draft the master plan for our sports equipment, continues the elected official.
We needed a system that combines simplicity of use with technological solidity, so that the results are indisputable.
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Ten times more people during the online consultation
Organized last September, the consultation involved 547 people.
Ten times more than an ordinary consultation for this kind of subject.
“The goal was to then organize participatory workshops which took place at the beginning of March, and where we had about forty people.
“A figure not necessarily impressive, but “we attracted an audience that would not have come spontaneously”, rejoices Isabelle Desbordes.
On the
modus operandi
, the city of Bruges first distributed 11,000 letters in the mailboxes of the inhabitants, on which appeared 4 QR codes so that each member of the same family could vote once.
By scanning the code, users were sent directly to an application to register and vote online by answering 23 questions.
Decentralized and transparent ballot box
For this consultation, the identity of the voters was not requested, “but we can completely graduate the security devices according to the stake of the ballot”, explains Jean-Sébastien Suze, director of Votelab.
Then there is the question of data processing, and this is where Civic Power offers an innovative offer, which goes through the blockchain.
“The security, integrity and transparency of the vote are the key elements of an election, insists Jean-Sébastien Suze.
And the risk is greater when it comes to an election with a political stake, than when choosing the color of street furniture.
“This is why we worked on a decentralized and transparent ballot box, via the blockchain, adds the president of Civic Power Christophe Camborde.
All votes are visible in real time, and they are obviously anonymized.
When you have voted, you are given a QR Code which allows you to verify the content of your vote.
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Civic Power isn't the only platform working on this digitized transparent ballot box.
This is also the case for another Bordeaux start-up, V8TE.
Launched in the midst of a pandemic, this company now offers a 100% self-service digital platform.
“You do not need anyone to register on our site and launch your ballot in a secure way, summarizes its founder Guillaume Odriosolo.
We mainly work with associations, companies, and a few communities, a whole environment that has experienced strong acceleration over the past two years with electronic signature software, for example.
At the same time, we are going to finalize a transparent digital ballot box technology, a technology that will make it possible to make the analogy with physical voting.
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“Finding ways to win back those who are angry”
The objective of this ecosystem is to participate in the implementation of electronic voting, which is not currently authorized in France, with a few exceptions, particularly for voters abroad.
"We also created Civic Power to lobby political authorities in favor of electronic voting, with the aim of combating abstention, which continues to grow", sums up Christophe Camborde.
In the first round of the presidential election, abstention among those under 34 reached 46%, whereas it was 30% in 2017. “We want to find the means, with digital tools, to recover those who are angry and who express themselves by being "haters" on social networks, as does the Elyze app [a comparator of candidate programs for young people] with whom we also collaborate.
Citizens have evolved, we must invent a new form of expression of the vote.
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“Facilitating the vote is not the solution, but a solution to fight against abstention, abounds Jean-Sébastien Suze.
The question is how to bring fellow citizens back to public affairs, whether to ask them for an opinion on urban development or to vote for the future President of the Republic.
And from our point of view, providing a technological brick facilitating access to voting would have an impact on participation.
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The thorny issue of security
However, the subject of electronic voting raises serious questions about security.
Several experts warn against the establishment of such a system in France.
"If you vote remotely, freedom no longer exists, you can have your vote bought, be coerced, you may not be the right person", warned François Pellegrini, professor of computer science at the University of Bordeaux, at the time of the last regional elections in 2021.
"There may be constraints on some individuals, admits Christophe Camborde, as there may be some around the voting booth too... That's why I watch Estonia very closely, where half of the country online voting and where there is a political consensus on the subject.
There you can change your vote online, or replace it with a physical vote if you wish... There are safeguards, organized around a unique identifier for everyone, via the identity card digital.
Their limit is the ballot box, which is centralized on a server in a database.
This is why we worked on a decentralized ballot box.
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Electronic voting will "take time before becoming more commonplace"
The objective for Civic Power is to carry out the experience of Bruges “on the scale of a department, a region, until the day when we will do it at the national level.
“The first deputy of Bruges is also in favor of a generalization of such a device.
“We feel that there is a bond of trust that has been weakened with elected officials… By involving citizens, not on all subjects, but as much as possible, we will try to rebuild this bond of trust.
This is why we are going to reuse the online consultation, on the theme of culture this time.
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However, electronic voting will “take time before becoming more commonplace,” says Christophe Camborde.
"We dream of organizing the presidential election in 2027 in this way, perhaps not on the whole of the ballot, but on a test zone at the level of a municipality or a region..." Guillaume Odriosolo is more cautious, and evokes a term "of ten to fifteen years.
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