E-voting abroad: what Estonia, Switzerland and France teach Belgium
Before choosing online voting for your 2028 social elections, it is worth looking at those who have already done it, at scale, on political elections. Three European countries offer three very different trajectories: Estonia, which went all-in on digital; Switzerland, which advances step by careful step; and France, which stumbled and then recovered. Each yields a lesson that transfers to the workplace. Here they are.
Estonia: online voting became the norm
Estonia is the textbook case. It is the only country to offer internet voting to all its voters, and has done so since 2005. Twenty years of real-world experience, then, on actual national elections.
The striking figure: at the 2023 parliamentary elections, 51.1% of voters voted online. For the first time, internet voting became the most-used channel, ahead of the physical ballot box. Online voting there coexists with polling-station voting, advance voting and home voting: it adds to the existing channels, it does not force them out.
The lesson for Belgium: online voting is not a marginal gadget. When it is reliable and offered over time, it can become the majority channel. For a company, that means sizing it as a primary channel, not a secondary option.
An honest caveat: Estonian research shows online voting has not increased overall turnout; it mostly prevented turnout from falling, and made voting more convenient. And part of the political class kept casting doubt on its integrity, which slightly eroded trust. Technology is not enough: trust has to be built and maintained.
Switzerland: caution as a method
Switzerland offers the counter-model: the country of direct democracy, where people vote often, chose to move very slowly.
In 2019, a public intrusion test revealed flaws in the verifiability of one of the online voting systems. The response was immediate: suspension. Rather than downplay the problem, the authorities stopped, reworked the system, and only resumed in 2023, in four cantons only (Basel-Stadt, St. Gallen, Graubünden, Thurgau), with a participation cap of around 3% of voters.
The lesson for Belgium: verifiability and transparency are not optional. The Swiss model says an online voting system must be publicly auditable, and that finding a flaw should trigger a fix, not denial. For a company, that translates into a simple requirement in the WC/CPPW agreement: the system must be verifiable and independently tested.
France: stumble, then recover
France, for the vote of French citizens abroad, tells the third story: failure overcome.
Internet voting has been provided for in French law since 2013. But in 2017, ANSSI (the national cybersecurity agency) decided, after a problematic full-scale test, not to activate online voting, to guarantee the security of the vote. In 2022, authentication problems, SMS codes that did not arrive in some countries, led to annulling the vote in 2 of the 11 constituencies for French citizens abroad.
And yet, in 2024, online voting came back strongly: at the legislative elections, more than 72% of overseas voters voted online. France is now working, with its provider and ANSSI, to strengthen authentication via certified digital identity.
The lesson for Belgium: the weak link is almost never the vote itself, it is authentication, how to make sure the right person votes, and actually receives their credentials. That is exactly the issue that arises in a company for workers without a work email. An authentication failure can cost an entire election.
What transfers to social elections
The context differs, national political elections on one side, company elections on the other. But the technical stakes are identical: ballot secrecy, verifiability, reliable authentication, voter trust. The three lessons combine into a checklist for your 2028 choice:
- From Estonia: size online voting as a potentially majority channel, not a gadget.
- From Switzerland: require verifiability and independent testing; a flaw found must be fixed, not hidden.
- From France: secure authentication first, especially for hard-to-reach populations.
In short
Three countries, three models: Estonia shows online voting can become the dominant channel, Switzerland that verifiability and transparency are non-negotiable, France that authentication is the real critical point. None of them runs company social elections, but all of them illuminate the choices a Belgian company must make for 2028. The right question is not "is online voting safe?" but "is this system verifiable, and is its authentication solid?".
To understand the Belgian legal requirements on these points, read The legal requirements for electronic voting in social elections. And if you want a system that takes these lessons on board, let's talk.
