Why Is Online Voting Still Largely a Black Box?

Online elections and polls are increasingly gaining ground. Since the beginning of the pandemic, many associations, companies and agencies opted for online elections at some point. Yet, most of these elections use online voting systems that are a black box for voters, even though the current state of research offers cryptographic means that would allow voters to detect potential manipulations, e.g., by methods for end-to-end (E2E) verifiability. In this paper, we report on qualitative exploratory research to determine the reasons for this situation. We evaluate responses from a panel at a national conference in Germany by specialists from official agencies, industry, and academia, whom we asked why election organizers still largely opt for systems that are not verifiable and how this could be changed. We furthermore present an exploratory study in which we asked program committee members from relevant international conferences to assess the obtained panel responses on their accuracy, relevance, and completeness. Finally, we discuss possible next steps for strengthening our findings and how to implement them to see more verifiable voting systems being used in the future.