GLOBAL TRENDS IN THE ADOPTION AND REJECTION OF EVMS: A COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS
AUTHOR – FIDAL TOM, STUDENT AT AMITY UNIVERSITY, NOIDA
BEST CITATION – FIDAL TOM, GLOBAL TRENDS IN THE ADOPTION AND REJECTION OF EVMS: A COMPARATIVE CONSTITUTIONAL AND LEGAL ANALYSIS, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 6 (6) OF 2026, PG. 746-757, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
Introduction
The adoption and withdrawal of EVMs worldwide do not seem to follow a uniform pattern. It was influenced by distinct constitutional standards, institutional traditions, individual experiences of electoral fraud, and a balance between technology and governance. Since the “first implementation of electronic voting devices in the 1970s and 1980s, global democracies experienced diverse attitudes toward the system, ranging from strong support as a solution for the operational flaws and risks of paper ballot elections to suspicion or complete disapproval of a technology that removes the paper record from the voter and the auditor.” Understanding this global context is essential for an accurate evaluation of India’s transition from ballot paper to EVMs and voter-verified paper audit trails. [1]
The global standard for electronic voting was created using instruments from the Council of Europe, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and the Venice Commission. [2]
“The Council of Europe’s Recommendation Rec. 2004/11 on Legal, Operational, and Technical Standards for e-voting; The Technologies; The OSCE/ODIHR Handbook for the Observation of New Voting Technologies; The Venice Commission’s Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.” [3]
These organizations collectively establish a framework of “verifiability, transparency, auditability, reliability, security, and accessibility” for evaluating national electronic voting systems. These worldwide norms, non-binding in international law, serve as authoritative benchmarks that have shaped the design of national EVM systems and the scrutiny of them by courts.
This chapter looks into global trends in the adoption and rejection of EVMs and offers a detailed review of the constitutional and legal protections for electronic voting across five jurisdictions: the United States, Brazil, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Venezuela.
These five jurisdictions represent the core models of EVM governance: adoption with a paper trail (United States), lack of public verifiability, which led to judicial rejection (Germany), a gradual adoption with constitutional limits (United Kingdom), a broad adoption with a strict audit (Brazil), and adoption within a compromised framework that led to controversy (Venezuela). The study aims to clarify the conditions necessary for electronic voting to meet the criteria of free and fair elections.
[1] International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA), Electronic Voting: A Summary of the International IDEA Handbook (International IDEA, Stockholm, 2011), pp. 1–5.
[2] Ibid., para. 29
[3].OSCE/ODIHR, Handbook for the Observation of New Voting Technologies (n 1) 11–17.