“The vote is anonymous”, Forum for Democracy swears about its internal referendum. Reality is a bit more complicated. “There is a difference between what is popularly called anonymous and how it works legally,” says privacy lawyer Jeroen Terstegge.
In the FvD referendum, which revolves around the question whether Thierry Baudet can remain political leader of the Forum, votes are stored together with a unique voting code. That code is specifically linked to a voter. That does not make the vote legally anonymous, but that does not mean that the party can see who voted what.
Voting takes place via the servers of the multinational BigPulse. That company specializes in internet voting. BigPulse knows who belongs to which voting code, but in this case does not share that information with Forum for Democracy, the party tells the NOS.
Legally, the method boils down to pseudonymisation, says Terstegge. “This is a security measure that is intended to prevent anyone from finding out who it is.”
But there is one risk: whoever can find out the unique voting codes in one way or another, also knows immediately who voted what. Unlike anonymization, pseudonymization allows you to re-identify people.
Moreover, the voting codes can be shared with Forum for Democracy, according to documentation from BigPulse, without the identity of the voter.
According to security specialist Matthijs Koot, who has researched anonymization, a lot depends on how easy those voting codes can be linked to people. If that is only possible in theory, then there is no problem, he says.
Hackers
Nevertheless, there are risks, even if Forum for Democracy cannot access the data in question. “Hackers could, for example, gain access to the identities of voters,” says Koot.
Incidentally, he does not think the chance that this will happen in an internal party election is very high. In a national election, such as in the House of Representatives elections, that chance is much greater, Koot thinks. “A system like this is totally unsuitable for that.”
Critics have long warned that it is difficult to keep them online in national elections. It will then be virtually impossible to guarantee the secrecy of the vote as well as honest and safe elections, they say.
The advantage of the solution that Forum for Democracy has chosen is that members can check afterwards whether their vote has been cast correctly. But that in turn comes at the expense of anonymity, which is considered crucial in democratic elections.
Criticism from former Member of Parliament
Former Forum member for the Provincial Council in Overijssel, Johan Almekinders, criticizes the referendum. He sees the vote on Baudet’s party leadership as mismanagement, which is why he is taking the board of FvD to court, writes RTV Oost. Almekinders was expelled from the party yesterday.
He states that the membership records are too messy to hold a proper referendum. “They write out members who are critical. Then of course you get North Korean results in such a referendum,” he told the broadcaster. There is not yet a date for a lawsuit. “It was already too late to stop the referendum. That was set up by leaps and bounds. All this to make it a ‘Forum of Baudet’.”
Almekinders states that the result will always be debatable, also because there is no alternative. “Compared to this, the election over the leadership within the CDA went very well.”
Earlier problems at CDA
Earlier this year, the CDA also struggled with an online election, in which a party leader was chosen. The opposite was the case: the party did not register who voted what, but the vote turned out to be susceptible to manipulation.
Because the party could not guarantee that all registered votes had actually been cast, the party aborted the election and started again. The election was ultimately won by Health Minister De Jonge.
In the case of the election at Forum for Democracy, there are no indications that the vote can be manipulated. According to the party, attempts have been made to hack the system, but they were not successful.