Based in Lueneburg, Germany, Electric Paper Informations Systeme (EPI) is a company that provides impactful solutions for the digitalization of the workplace and has been working in the field of tension between “people, paper and processes”. For over 20 years, they have contributed to the efficient conduct of internal elections across departmental and organizational boundaries. EPI has partnered with universities, enterprises, trade unions and chambers of commerce to offer both paper-based and online voting options in elections, ensuring reliable, customizable and scalable end-to-end voting solutions for its customers.
Bringing Sequent’s End-To-End Verifiable Voting Solution to the German Market
Based in Lueneburg, Germany, Electric Paper Informations Systeme (EPI) is a company that provides impactful solutions for the digitalization of the workplace and has been working in the field of tension between “people, paper and processes”. For over 20 years, they have contributed to the efficient conduct of internal elections across departmental and organizational boundaries. EPI has partnered with universities, enterprises, trade unions and chambers of commerce to offer both paper-based and online voting options in elections, ensuring reliable, customizable and scalable end-to-end voting solutions for its customers.
Challenges
Complicated Electoral Processes
Every year, EPI conducts multiple elections, many of them for both national and highly complex organizations with special ballot requirements that can complicate the election process. One example is the University of Muenster who commissioned EPI to create 99 different ballot styles that included relevant student candidates based on their majors. The complexities of such electoral processes done on paper, increases the possibility of human mistake. In addition, paper-ballot designing, printing, distributing, and counting in this case can be extremely costly and challenging from an operational perspective.
Hybrid Elections – In-Person and Remote Voting
With the COVID-19 pandemic and growing demand from EPI’s clients to make voting more convenient and accessible to voters, EPI needed a solution that would work seamlessly with their election management system (uniWAHL) to provide a fully online or hybrid elections where it was possible to vote both in-person (on paper) and remotely using the voter’s mobile. The solution should also be flexible enough to suit the various requirements of their clients without the need for custom development.
EPI initially thought about developing their own solution for the German market, but developing such a program that adheres to security, accessibility, end-to-end verifiability and regulatory standards comes with a significant amount of capital investment required, development challenges and would dramatically delay the time-to-market.
Security, Regulations and Accessibility
As EPI decided to make the transition to offering its clients the option to vote remotely online (with or without an in-person paper-based voting option) it was now imperative for them to find a solution that allowed them to seamlessly handle online voting with their election management system (uniWAHL) and at the same time, match the same level of security, data-compliance and the Council of Europe Recommendation Standards for e-Voting (e.g. online voting). Furthermore, the solution had to be mobile-friendly, fully responsive and easily accessible to people with disabilities.
How Sequent Helps EPI
EPI selected Sequent’s online voting platform and with the guidance of Sequent’s development team, successfully integrated it with their existing election management software, uniWAHL, to deliver fully online or hybrid elections in a safe, reliable, scalable, and cost-effective way to their clients.
Election configuration and results are imported directly to and from Sequent’s online voting solution (locally branded as EPI’s OWS – Online Voting System) and the entire system is hosted on German Deutsche Telekom servers and is operated on a highly-secure level.
In short, the focus is on providing a combination of paper-based voting, where votes are manually submitted and scanned for tallying, as well as an online solution for remoting voting, EPI along with Sequent’s solution offers an end-to-end voting solution for its clients.
Regulations, Security, and Verifiability
Sequent’s solution has been in development since 2014 in accordance with online voting standards and cybersecurity best practices, including the Council of Europe Recommendation Standards from 2017. Moreover, Sequent is developing its solution as an open-source software, in close collaboration with academic experts and uses battle-tested cryptography to ensure end-to-end verifiability (where voters can individually verify their ballot cast and count them correctly and where auditors can audit the election results) – This is why Sequent’s unique approach was a natural choice for EPI.
Easier Management of Complex Electoral Processes
By leveraging Sequent’s comprehensive API interface, EPI was able to easily design in their election management system multiple, user-friendly ballot styles and seamlessly create a digital copy on Sequent’s platform. In the case of hybrid elections, a twin copy of the paper ballot will be created on the Sequent platform to ensure a unified voter experience. Cast ballots will later be consolidated back into EPI’s system to ensure a single source of record.
Accessibility
Sequent’s online voting platform is a web-based, mobile-friendly, and fully responsive application. This means voters are not obligated to download any app in advance and can use the most current (as well as older models) mobile devices or a PC to cast their ballot. Sequent is also fully compliant with WCAG 2.1 AA standards for people with disabilities.
Cost-Effective Solution
Even though organizations that are transforming to hybrid elections may experience increased costs through the transition period as voters are presented with the option to vote remotely online and/or arrive in-person to vote on paper, it provides the option to gradually narrow down the in-person operations and move online entirely, thus saving costs in the long run. Organizations that are able to move to online voting immediately enjoy the benefits of lower-cost elections right from the start.
Deploying online elections also allows EPI to rely less on expensive human operations to print, deliver and count complex paper ballots in their client elections, in turn, allowing them to onboard more new clients with minimal operations and support.