Internet voting leads to fewer human errors in tallying votes
Even within Japan, the number of polling stations is decreasing due to factors such as depopulation. People living in remote islands and mountainous areas have no choice but to go to polling stations far away due to limited means of transportation. However, online voting eliminates the distance and time constraints to go to polling stations. "In addition to the elderly, people recuperating at home or in hospitals, and people with disabilities, we should consider introducing online voting not only for students who live far away from their parents, but also for people who live away from home. These people should have their resident cards transferred, but many of them do not for various reasons, and it is time-consuming and costly to return to their hometowns to cast their votes every time an election is held. "The advantage of online voting is that it can be adapted to each situation and environment," says Kojima.
Also, in terms of election affairs, there is a possibility that the burden of voting and counting work of elections and local governments can be greatly reduced. First of all, it is possible to streamline and improve the efficiency of polling stations. For example, the Public Offices Election Law stipulates that polling stations must have at least two and no more than five voters. “Assuming that two people are assigned to each, if there are 100 polling stations, 200 witnesses will be required. We can streamline the opening of polling stations and manpower considerably,” Kojima points out.
The most important thing in the election counting process is that the total number of voters reported from each polling station matches the number of votes in the ballot box. “However, in human work, mistakes can occur due to various factors,” Kojima said with a sour expression. With online voting, it should be possible to eliminate most of the manual counting errors.