It has been suggested that digital signature technology is the key to securing the Internet voting process. Digital signatures provide the best level of security in electronic transactions, however they are not inexpensive, and questions about funding are important. If the government provides a digital signature for all voters, the cost would be very high. Conversely, if voters who are willing to buy a digital signature are the only ones who are allowed to vote over the Internet, then economic barriers to participation are being created. Some digital signatures are obtained without requiring any personal identification, while others require high levels of identification, including personal interviews.
Smart cards are credit card-sized cards that contain small computer chips.
Such cards could be mailed to voters with pre-programmed ballots as well as encryption keys. Besides potential security problems with the cards themselves, postal mail theft could pose additional problems. Voice recognition, fingerprint recognition, and similar biometric techniques could be used to make sure that only registered voters cast ballots. Voters would not be able to give their passwords to other people and those techniques would bring added security to an online voting system. However, use of these techniques may raise privacy concerns.