Mariana Afanasieva, Ph.D.

Summer Semester 2022

Mariana Afanasieva, a fellow of the Ukrainian Researchers at Risk program, will spend the summer semester 2022 in Graz.

Currently, she is researching the issue of “Digitalization of the Voting Process: European experience and Ukrainian perspective”. The transition to digital voting is a sensitive process in terms of identity authentication, security of results and the possibility of public and judicial control.

In my research, I ask myself, why e-voting is a place of distrust, although we trust the digital space with finances, property, personal data, signature (consent), but not our voice. Whether existing challenges can be overcome, what key factors it depends on and what measures contribute to this.

"The overall goal of her research is to analyse the political, social, legal and technological challenges and perspectives of e-voting, in particular: how to ensure that the technology of e-voting complies with the international electoral standards, European and national electoral laws; what evidence can confirm the opposite, that the technological solutions do not correspond to them; how to ensure the trust of all subjects of the electoral process in the technology of electronic voting and its results, etc."

Mariana Afanasieva – Doctor of Law, Professor of the National University "Odessa Law Academy", advocate. Her dissertation researches are devoted to the influence of manipulative electoral technologies (2004) and electoral engineering (2015) on the results of elections in Ukraine.