https://citizens-initiative.europa.eu/_en, This is the initiative I am talking about. You have to prove you are an EU citizen and then you can sign for the initiatives you want and if a million signatures are reaching within a year then it must be brought to the EU commission.
So if citizens of EU member states can sign online, why can’t they vote online for elections or referendums? If possible, this would decrease the need and power of representative democracy and move closer to direct democracy, which I argue is a good thing
Signing a petition is public, who you cast your vote for is private.
If there were any doubts on the signatures, officials can contact the people who signed and verify that they did sign. How do you verify a secret vote without ruining the secrecy?
I mean you can have online voting if you cast a ballot thats public, and it’d be verifiable, but then we go back to the 1800s in the US where threatening voters is a thing.
You have 3 elements:
1: Internet voting
2: Secrecy
3: Verifiable
Pick 2.
As a counter argument: some countries (like the USA) accept mass mail-in voting, which has the same downsides as online voting (plus the “ballot took five weeks to reach the next town so your vote didn’t count” problem with an underfunded mail service).
Which isn’t to say digital voting is good, but clearly many people value the easier participation over the verifiability/security of normal voting.
What exactly do you mean, the same downsides?
Mail ballots require physical presence to tamper with, so if you have armed guards + security cameras watching the drop box, most tampering threats can be prevented, at the same time, no one knows who the voter really voted for since envelopes are sealed.
In contrast, internet connections are really easy to tamper with. Most people just blindly click past https warnings, and thats just the most basic attacks, there are more sophisticated attacks. Not to mention, you dont even need physical presense. Anyone, anywhere around the world can hack an online vote.