Online Voting in Germany: Insights from the SPD´s 2019 Leadership Vote

Ever since the ruling by the German Constitutional Court had placed strict requirements of verifiability and auditability on computer-based voting technologies in 2009, the use of electronic voting methods has been on halt in Germany. While the use of flawed voting machines in the 2005 federal election had already caused a public stir, the court´s decision to declare the utilized technology unconstitutional has eventually led to the emergence of a political culture wary of technological renewal in the electoral process. With technology having made major advances in the last decade, especially in the field of cryptography and other internet-based technologies, it questionable to what extent such skepticism is still justified. Moreover, the recent leadership vote of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) where its members were given the possibility to cast their vote online, suggests that German politics is reconsidering its stance on computer-based voting technologies. However, this development was met with new criticism regarding the security and usability of the employed system. While the SPD vouched for the security of the online election, critics were especially concerned with the reliability of the voter-identification methods and potential manipulations to the vote. Hence, the purpose of this study is to examine the extent to which the case of the SPD is able to meet the legal and security related requirements and defy the long-standing criticism existing in German society.