E-voting versus e-trust: A case for e-democracy in Palestine

Shat, Fouad; Pimenidis, Elias

Abstract

The world at present is facing a number of real challenges in the face of persistent economic crisis, local conflicts and huge waves of refugees. All of the above are affecting secure access to and completion of peoples voting rights. The relevant technological solutions appear to have matured and have successfully responded to rigorous testing. The need for digital access to election events is probably higher than ever in digital age. The question that remains to be answered is whether all this enough to inspire people to trust the systems and participate amass in e-voting particularly in areas where the political climate might be volatile. Palestinian have been scattered across the world since the late 1940s. This forced diaspora creates particular challenges as the Palestinian Authority (PA) continues to gain international recognition as an emerging state. The PA is experiencing a huge difficulty in enabling its citizens to elect their representative. According to PA officials many countries who are hosting Palestinians as refugees don’t accept the facilitation of elections for representatives to the PA government. Using e-voting systems could offer a solution to overcoming this problem and the PA has been evaluating such systems since 2011. The inspiration for this paper is taken from the results of an extensive survey conducted by the authors to evaluate the response amongst Palestinians around the world to the Palestinian Authority’s decision to fully embrace e-Voting.

Citation

Shat, F., & Pimenidis, E. (2016). E-voting versus e-trust: A case for e-democracy in Palestine

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Conference Name: 16th European Conference on eGovernment ECEG 2016
• Conference Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia
• Start Date: Jun 16, 2016
• End Date: Jun 17, 2016
• Acceptance Date: Apr 28, 2016
• Publication Date: Jun 1, 2016
• Deposit Date: Jun 6, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 23, 2016
• Journal: 16th European Conference on eGovernment, ECEG 2016
• Print ISSN: 2049‐1026
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: e-government, e-voting, e-trust, political will
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/911405
• Publisher URL: http://www.academic-conferences.org/conferences/ecdg/future-and-past/
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : 16th European Conference on eGovernment, ECEG 2016