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Out With E-Voting, In With M-Voting

Posted by Zonk on from the has-to-be-safer-than-diebold dept.

InternetVoting writes "The ever technology forward nation sometimes known as 'E-stonia' after recently performing the world's first national Internet election are already leaving e-voting behind. Estonia is now considering voting from mobile phones using SIM cards as identification, dubbed 'm-voting.' From the article: 'Mobile ID is more convenient in that one does not have to attach a special ID card reader to one's computer. A cell phone performs the functions of an ID card and card reader at one and the same time.'"

3 of 161 comments (clear)

  1. How about this... by Cap'nPedro · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have 8 sim cards.

    Does that mean I get 8 votes?

  2. Tried this in the UK by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Funny

    We tried this in the UK, but for some reason the votes were still being counted 3 hours after the results were announced.

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  3. Since when did democracy need to be convenient? by blubadger · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm serious. We know from experiments in Estonia and Switzerland and elsewhere that e-voting is convenient. M-voting will probably be even more so.

    We also know that there are fundamental, perhaps irremediable problems with voting electronically and remotely. In particular:

    • Security: In a complex system, the potential for undetected fraud multiplies exponentially
    • Transparency: The right of the voter to check how a poll is conducted is somewhat compromised by a need to understand source code (this reached court in Switzerland)
    • Identity: It's obvious and also applies to postal voting, but how do you know who is really voting on that remote device?

    Is democracy like shopping on Amazon, to be judged by its convenience and efficiency? Or is it something more important, and precious, than that?

    I think that if people take democracy seriously, they should slow down and ask these questions a bit more. If it means a few more years of voting the boring manual way, perhaps that will be for good reasons.