Implications of E-Voting for Democratic Resilience in Georgia and Moldova

Electoral interference has been the key tool of Russia’s hybrid warfare, particularly in Moldova and Georgia, the two aspiring EU members. As such, both countries have made considerable progress towards strengthening electoral integrity and adopting e-voting technology. As many as 90 percent of voters in Georgia are expected to have access to e-voting technology in the upcoming 2024 Parliamentary elections, and Moldova too is gradually moving towards e-voting despite initial setbacks. What will be the immediate and long-term impact of e-voting technologies on democratic resilience in Moldova and Georgia? Although regional pundits and European policymakers welcomed these developments, this study reexamines the implications of electoral modernization for the democratic resilience by bridging together the literature on cybersecurity of e-voting with the literature on diaspora politics. The voting literature has been dominated by the debated between cyber optimist, cyber pragmatists, and cyber skeptics about the tradeoffs between electoral integrity and political inclusion, especially in the countries with a large digital divide. The implicit assumption has been that domestic voters are the key target groups, while neglecting to discuss the effects of e-voting on overseas constituents. On the other hand, the rapidly sprawling literature on diaspora politics has focused on the mobilization strategies used by political actors, while leaving the question of election technologies unexamined. This study seeks to address this void by examining whether new e-voting technologies will lead to the formation of new cleavages that would cut across or will reinforce the existing domestic vs. overseas voters divides and what implications it may have for democratic resilience of these countries. Building on qualitative interviews with subject matter experts from both countries and insights from survey data, the paper juxtaposes three alternative processes by which e-voting can affect democratic resilience. The first is exacerbation of the digital divide brought about by e-voting; the second is increasing unevenly participation among diaspora vis-à-vis domestic voters; and finally, by eroding trust in democratic process as the result of the exploitation of cybersecurity vulnerabilities by adversaries.