What is this extremely long queue in Stuttgart?
What happens at elections around the world, and how democracy is affected.
Vote News: Elections Around the World
Record turnouts, hacked election systems, security gaps and absurd rulings. Vote News tells the stories behind elections worldwide in short videos and articles. Each story shows why voting has to become more accessible, more secure and more transparent, and where online voting can help.
Election News: Absurd Votes, Lost Ballots and Recounts
Vote News covers the elections that make you look twice. Here are a few of the stories we cover:
- Ballots that turn up after election day: In Maine, uncounted postal ballots suddenly surfaced and flipped the result, in a race that came down to a single vote.
- Ballots that confuse voters: In Alaska, it was unclear who people were actually voting for, because it seemed like every second name on the ballot was Dan Sullivan.
- Campaigns against postal voting: When Trump, the AfD or in general right wing parties internationally stir up distrust of postal voting, we look at the facts. Postal voting is not perfectly secret, since a husband can watch his wife fill out her ballot. It is still secure.
- When membership votes become a legal question: The German Federal Cartel Office says the 50+1 rule in Bundesliga can stay, but only if members can really take part in decisions.
Postal Voting, Ballot Secrecy and Trust in Elections
These stories may sound absurd, but they show where democracy is fragile. When every single vote counts, ballots must not get lost. When voters cannot clearly tell candidates apart, the result no longer reflects what they wanted. And when people lose trust in a voting method, they stop taking part.
Postal voting shows one more thing: ballot secrecy and election security are not the same. A voting method can be secure even if nobody can guarantee who is watching at the kitchen table. Online voting faces exactly the same prejudice.
How Online Voting Solves These Election Problems
Many of these problems would not occur with online voting. Digital ballots cannot get lost in a drawer or turn up after election day: every vote is recorded and counted immediately. A clear digital ballot can show more than a name, so voters know exactly who they are choosing. And organisations whose members are spread out can make sure that everyone really gets a say. That is exactly what rules like 50+1 require.
How online elections stay secure and secret is explained in our Security & Data Protection section.
All Vote News stories: