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Estonian Internet Voting Called a Success
composer314 writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the small European nation of Estonia has conducted large-scale voting over the Internet. From the article: "Last week, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the internet. Fewer than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, but officials hailed the experiment as a success." The system is built on Linux." I guess it works well when the Internet is considered a human right.
Estonia
You're welcome.
No, that's Elbonia- Estonia is about 50 miles north of where Elbonia is supposed to be. They're full of forests and songs instead of mud. (no, really- their revolution was called the "singing revolution" because as the soviet tanks were leaving, they were followed by crowds of people singing songs. Velio Tormis was their "Conductor General", and they've only been free since 1992).
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Are you saying that only 49% of the population COULD have voted at all in the election? If so you're severly misinformed. 1% isn't the total number of people who voted, but the total number of people who voted online.
Information is sparse, but does anyone know if votes were linked to who voted for what?
Do you mean are they supposed to be, or if they can be? I'm assuming they aren't supposed to be, but without a doubt they can be. The cards are used "for online access to bank accounts and tax record", so they clearly identify the user, which would be required to prevent duplicate voting, and thus they know who you are when you access the system. I'm sure they claim that they don't associate the user with the subsequent vote, but it would be simple as pie to store that information.
This is exactly why I don't want a system like this in the U.S., for exactly the reason you state: coercion and retaliation.
The enemies of Democracy are
The following are actual countries ending in -stan Former members of the USSR: - Kazakhstan - Uzbekistan - Turkmenistan - Tajikistan - Kyrgyzstan Not members of the USSR: - Afghanistan (but almost!) - Pakistan "-stan" is a suffix in Farsi and Sanskrit meaning "home" or "place of". For a full list of national, regional, and ficticious -stans, see -stan article on wikipedia.
From the article, and the summary... "Fewer than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated *online* in elections for mayors and city councils across the country" (stars added by me)
The vote wasn't exclusively online. Everyone else who voted did it the normal way- this just expands the options for casting your vote.
"Quoting yourself is stupid." -Me
Estonia was part of the Russian empire until 1918, it was independent from 1918 to 1940 when it was forcibly annexed by the Soviet Union, all along it has been an ethnically distinct region. Estonia had only been part of Russia for 200 years prior to 1710 it had been part of either Denmark, Poland or Sweden.
It was never an ethnically Russian area.
there is no guarantee with any kind of voting that the vote has not been bought - the only difference with distance voting is that people can look over your shoulder to check you vote the way you're paid to.
however, the estonian system has several interesting measures to combat this. you can vote online as many times as you like - only your last vote will count. so once the mobster has left, you just vote again. also a paper ballot takes supremacy over an internet ballot, so voting in person in a secret booth is still entirely possible even after voting online (a good fallback for people concerned about the security of their online vote too)
all in all, it seems like a very well thought-out online voting system, designed to complement rather than replace the paper ballot system. a shame that it requires a national ID card.
Estonia is the country that gave us KaZaa (or at least the programmers who wrote the code).
and same programmers did also the Skype.
As an Estonian e-voter I have some things to add ;) There is a general document on the process that also covers the storage of votes and identity management.
Basically, the (anonymous) vote is encrypted and stored in an envelope bearing the voter's ID. So you can later change your vote and your vote can be discarded if you decide to do it the old way. However, the keys used to encrypt the votes are generated by a hardware crypto-server. To access the private keys needed to decrypt the votes, 4 of 6 smartcard-equipped representatives must be present.
I'm not a cryptographics guru but I believe in the 'mathematical' soundness of all this. However, main concerns of serious opponents rely elsewhere. The voting process is not as transparent as it is in the case of ordinary paper-and-pen mechanism. You can basically buy the ID card from some poor homeless dude (or even help him acquire it and pay for it + some extra for booze) and nobody can later invalidate the vote(s) you gave. There are some other related ways of possible abuse, such as using botnets/malware to render e-voting infrastructure useless etc, but they have been generally taken care of as e-voting can only be used during so-called pre-voting period (not sure what might be the correct terminology), before the actual election day. So if you couldn't e-vote, you can always go and resort to the good old way.
Find out it at http://www.vvk.ee/
Its the official Vabariigi valimiskomision (National Electoral Commitee) page.
There is even an english section.
Estonia has an electronic ID card. You can read about it here(in english) http://www.id.ee/pages.php/0303 and about Estonian Internet voting from here http://www.vvk.ee/elektr/docs/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf