Towards Digital Democracy: Evaluating the Legal and Technological Pathways for Digital Elections in Austria

Abstract

This Master’s thesis, titled “Towards Digital Democracy: Evaluating the Legal and
Technological Pathways for Digital Elections in Austria,” explores the development and
implementation of a digital voting system aimed at modernizing electoral processes in
Austria. The core objective is to create a prototype that ensures electoral integrity,
legal compliance, and technological feasibility, facilitating a transition from traditional
manual voting to a secure digital format.
The research considers approaches from various countries, including Estonia and India, which have implemented digital voting systems with varying degrees of success. The
current status of digital elections in Austria is also examined to provide a comprehensive
understanding of the local context and challenges.
The main focus of the thesis is the development of a prototype digital voting system.
Specific goals were defined in the approach to ensure the prototype meets the requirements for facilitating a digital election. These goals include ensuring equal suffrage,
personal suffrage, secret suffrage, and free suffrage, alongside verifying votes, maintaining modularity and flexibility, ensuring reliable processing, and providing verifiable vote
counting.
In terms of implementation, the prototype employs a microservices architecture for
modularity and scalability. Key components include an authentication service for secure voter identification, RSA encryption for maintaining vote secrecy, and a verification mechanism to enhance transparency and voter confidence. The API Gateway
coordinates interactions between services, while RabbitMQ manages reliable message
processing.
A VoteSimulator was developed to test the prototype, simulating both individual
and bulk voting processes. The prototype successfully demonstrated compliance with
the defined goals, highlighting its potential to support secure and trustworthy digital elections. Upon completion, the prototype was thoroughly evaluated, revealing its
strengths and areas for improvement. The evaluation led to the identification of future
work necessary to transition the prototype into a fully operational system. These future enhancements will ensure the prototype’s readiness for productive use in real-world
elections.

Date of Award	2024
Original language	English (American)
Supervisor	Erik Sonnleitner (Supervisor)