Online voting for the Police Council

Certainly, the introduction of new forms of online voting represents a challenge for a society accustomed to democratic processes in person. However, the transformation is simple and friendly if it is done with the support of an entity with the experience of Minsait, a company of Indra, and a modern and secure solution such as Onesait Democracy Elections Online, Minsait's online voting system. Let us explain the case of the Spanish National Police Council.

The National Police Council is the representative body of the members of the National Police Force of Spain, composed of union representatives from each of the four levels that exist. These elections represented an enormous challenge for their organizers due to the deployment throughout the national territory of Spain of around 70,000 police officers with the right to vote. For this reason, these elections have been held remotely since 2007. The 2019 elections were again a success, the 70,000 police officers with the right to vote were able to exercise their right from all corners of Spain, avoiding transfers and facilitating participation. A participation rate of 72.75% was achieved, slightly less than the 80% reached in 2015. Online voting was also complemented by the post-vote for voters who preferred to use paper-based voting.

The system implemented for the National Police Council elections is extremely simple to use. The user only had to access the system with his or her e-ID, professional police card or alternative card. The system checked the validity of the certificate, the voting period and the data of the voter against the census (checking that he has not voted previously, he has not requested the vote by post, range, etc.). If they were correct, the system determined the type of electronic ballot that corresponded to the voter according to his or her range. It would then send to the voter's team the nominations on which they could vote and the certificate from the counting authority. The voter cast his or her vote, it was encrypted with the public key of the counting authority, the voter signed his or her vote with the certificate that was inside his or her voter identification device (e-ID, professional police card or alternate card) and then it was sent to the system. This guaranteed that the vote was not altered and that a voter registered on the electoral roll cast it. Once received, the system again checked the identity of the voter and that he or she had not previously exercised his or her right to vote. The system removed the voter's signature and added the server's signature to the encrypted vote. This guaranteed that no one could insert votes into the system. It also made it impossible to link votes to voters in any way.

Finally, the encrypted and signed vote was stored until the counting process started. Once Election Day was over, the members of the counting authority, who had been designated prior to Election Day and who had proceeded to set up the table, retrieved and counted the stored votes. This process of closing the voting and counting the votes until official results were obtained was carried out in less than 3 minutes. It was a quick and clean election in which no complaints were registered.

The electoral system of the Police Council is not simple, since the elections of 4 different ranges and 50 different constituencies take place on the same day. This makes a telematic voting system significantly simplifying logistics and costs, since it eliminates the need to have 4 ballot boxes per polling station (one per range), as well as ballots for each candidate, range and district. A telematic voting system such as the one implemented in these elections facilitates the exercise of the vote when the electorate is geographically dispersed. It also allows the election to be held in several days to increase turnout. As indicated by the Chief Commissioner of the Police Information Technology Area, Juan Crespo, "the internal electoral process was carried out with total tranquility and with the guarantee of the legitimacy of the results obtained. Online voting is part of the digital transformation that the National Police Force is undertaking, constituting a truly beneficial experience for our collective".

We are living in times of change, of new challenges. It is a good time to reflect and see if our democratic processes are ready to move towards the solutions that this 21st Century allows. Minsait will stand with all institutions that wish to take this step forward.