Slashdot Mirror
The World's First National Internet Election
InternetVoting writes "Expanding on the limited 2005 Internet voting pilot successes, the small European nation of Estonia will become the first country to allow voting in a national parliamentary election via the Internet. Fresh off the news of France's successful primary election using Internet voting and the announcement of 12 new UK election pilots, is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?"
If everybody else is doing it than it must be safe and we should jump off of the bridge to. Didn't most of us outgrow this?
is Europe leaving the U.S. behind?
I didn't know they were related...
Nice dis of the US though [for no reason whatsoever]. I should point out that Canada doesn't have voting over the net either. Neither does most of the free world. [and yes, I'm Canadian...]
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Don't all the qualms with electronic, paperless voting apply here?
The question is, is that a bad thing? We have enough problems trying to secure our electoral process without internet voting to make everything even more difficult. In addition to the security concerns (now elections can be hacked from anywhere, Russia, China, Iran) there's also the problems with coercion. With secret balloting, it's more-or-less impossible to coerce voters, because there no way to prove how someone voted. But when you can stand over their should while they vote, it becomes a lot easier.
I think the biggest question is, what problem is this trying to solve? What's wrong with non-internet voting that internet voting will fix? And will whatever that is be worth the consequences? I'm one who feels like the days of a pen-marking-paper ballots should come back (hey, we still have them in my district) and leave behind all of these more modern, more easily hacked systems. Is it really that important that the results of the election be known the of the election? Important enough that we're willing to sacrifice the security of the balloting?
In the beginning the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry and is widely considered as a bad move.
Really, the point of voting in person is to provide a safe place so that no one sees who you vote for except for yourself.
What measure did they take to ensure that no one looks over the voter's computer screen and bribe/threaten the voter ?
This is a bad idea for the reason that countries have secret voting.
A significant part of "secret voting" is that not only is the government unable to look into how you personally vote, but it must also guarantee that nobody else can look into it, so that the vote is yours and yours alone.
When you vote from home, this guarantee cannot be fulfilled, as you can be pressured into voting for whatever by whomever else happens to be in the house with you at that time. That is not necessarily a very pleasant experience.
As soon as "internet voting" has been reviewed to see how well a rigged election can be performed, the U.S will switch, too.
I'm not sure which is worse:
a) a general election using faulty touch screens, or
b) a "secure" online election, but voting is easy enough that we have 90% turnout... which includes the 45% of the population that has absolutely no clue about anything to do with the election, and vote based on whatever (mis)information they read on a blog that morning.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Voting over the internet has its attractions, but it often involves leaving behind the concept of the secret ballot (as does mail-in voting as in Oregon of course) and also can generate serious security risks. Not enough details on the Estonian system -- if the real voting is done on the small box they put their card into and it can generate a secure channel to the voting system, then it's possible to do it securely even with a compromised network or PC, but if the PC is involved in anything but passing along encrypted traffic, there are serious risks.
Likewise if these are terminals at home, secret ballot goes out the window. If these are terminals in a secured location just using the internet as a platform for encrypted communication with a server, you can still have secret ballot.
But in any case, voting over the internet presents real problems in auditability. Where is the paper trail?
It's good to be left behind in these areas.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
We no longer have those communications restrictions. With TV, www etc, you can find out everything you want to know about pretty much any issue immediately. So, why have representatives and parliments?
Instead of voting in representatives, why not just have an online referendum for every law change etc?
That would make a lot more sense than the current set up. Say you like Party A's education policy but Party B's health policy. Under the current mechanism you're stuffed: you have to pick one or the other and make a compromise. With individual voting on each issue you'd be able to vote for what you want on every issue. Surely that would be more democratic?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I will never, ever trust an election where people vote through a computer. There are things that are so important for the future of a country, such as a presidential or a parliamentary election, that you just have to go back to the basics: a pencil and piece of paper. I don't care how long the process takes or how expensive it is. The whole process has to be transparent to voters.
In my country (as in many countries) you go to a booth, you vote in secret, you drop your vote in a transparent box, the votes are then counted publicly one by one, with everybody (party delegates, voters, the press, etc.) carefully monitoring and counting the results. This way parties are able to independently count the results and compare them with the official results. Tell me how this beautiful, democratic process can be replicated when voting on a computer, where your vote goes through a black box?
There are some things that are just too important to be left in the hands of computers.
What you describe is "direct democracy". They had that in Athen. It has all kind of fun effects, like first executing the homecoming officers for leaving their dead beind after a lost battle, then, after realizing that was a bad idea, executing the people who ordered the executions. Or executing one of the worlds greatest philosophers (Socrates) for being a stubborn pain in the ass.
The idea behind representative democracy is to avoid the "heat of the movement" decisions. In fact, the major problem with representative democracy these days, is that with the constant polling and professional politicians who adjust their views to follow the vims of the (voting part of) the population, we are getting closer to direct democracy. Representative democracy works best when politicians actually stand for something.