Benefits of online voting in France 2021

In France, the online voting system, which allows people to vote remotely, from anywhere, via a computer, a smartphone, or a tablet with an Internet connection, already exists in certain contexts. It is sometimes used in professional environments, for example during elections of employee representatives, in some financial contexts, such as during the General Assembly of a company, as well as in some political cases, such as primaries or citizen consultations. However, it is not used for national and local elections. According to a large part of the French population, the advantages of this system would be the saving of time, that it is in tune with the time, as well as the fact that it would encourage the younger generation to participate more in elections.

A way to reduce abstention

The implementation of the online voting system for national elections is part of the solutions sometimes proposed in the debate on how to fight abstention. Voter turnout, whether for presidential, legislative, or regional elections, has been declining sharply over the past few years, which is a cause for concern for public authorities. The most striking example is the regional elections of 2021, where less than one in five young people went to the polls. However, online voting is not the first solution mentioned by the French to deal with the scale of this phenomenon. When asked in 2022, they were more likely to support the recognition of the blank vote and to consider that it was necessary to limit the number of mandates of elected officials in time.

Concerns about the safety of the system

The online voting system also raises some concerns among the French. More than half of the people surveyed in 2021 said that the fear of possible rigging or manipulation of the results by the organizers of the vote, or that of computer hacking by an outside organization would be likely to prevent them from using this option. Also, nearly a quarter of respondents worried that the system would not work, or that the anonymity and confidentiality of voters would not be respected.