Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processes

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Citizen participation using electronic voting for
decision making processes

• Presentation at ESF TED WorkshopHelsinki, May,
  20th 2004
• Robert Krimmer
• University of Linz,Vienna University of
  Economics and Business Administration

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• How come Electronic Voting has become such a big
  issue, when its just about counting 1 and 1?

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Overview

• What is E-Voting?
• Why is E-Voting interesting?
• How to preserve anonymity?
• The European experience
• Standardization efforts

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E-Governance
E-Democracy
E-Government
E-Participation E-Voting
E-Administration
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(No Transcript)
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Instruments of E-Democracy
Political Process (iii) Decision (ii)
Formation of an opinion (i) Information
acquisition
E-Voting
E-Mail
Chat
Web-sites
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Infor- Uni- Bi- Trans- mation directional
actional
Technical Complexity
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What is E-Voting?
Local Remote
Paper-based Polling station Postal Voting
Electronic Voting Electronic Voting Machines Internet Voting (RVEM)
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Why is E-Voting interesting?

• Elections are a major administrative work ?
  require trained persons
• Election procedures are complex? counting may
  take multiple days
• More and more citizens are on the move? need for
  flexible registration schemes

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Basic Issues

• Uneqivocal identification of the Voter
• With absolute anonymity at the point of casting
  the vote and
• No possibility for the election administration to
  change votes or to break the anonymity.

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Solutions

• Preserving anonymity by hiding the vote
  Homomorphism

Ballot Sheet(yes/no)
Voter
Server
10110100 00111000 .... sum yes/no
10110100
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Solutions

• Preserving anonymity by hiding the voter TAN

Receives TAN by mail
Voter
Server
Enter TAN Ballot sheet
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Solutions

• Preserving anonymity by hiding the voter Blind
  signature

• One-step procedures
• Two-step procedures

Voting token
(1) Identification
(2) Vote casting
Election Day
x days beforehand
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European Experience

• Switzerland three pilots (referenda)
• Germany pilots with public non-political
  elections
• United Kingdom large-scale pilots in 2002/03,
  none in 2004
• France CSFE, professional bodies etc.
• Spain three tests (one from abroad)

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European Experience

• Ireland frozen/postponed
• Netherlands EP elections, from abroad
• Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic drafts
• Estonia legally binding e-voting for regional
  elections
• Austria
• two tests, one road-map private initiatives
• Min/Int working group on e-voting

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Council of EuropeStandardization efforts

• started end of 2002
• 48 member countries
• aims Council of Ministers Recommendation
  legal, operational and technical standards
• more difficult than initially expected
• but close co-operation / mutual understanding
  between legal and technology experts

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Council of EuropeStandardization efforts

• minimum standards for legislation and product
  requirements
• for member states and third parties (industry)
• broad and clear definitions
• focus on e-voting specificities
• no recommendation on usefulness / introduction

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Resume

• No unique trend towards electronic voting
  machines or electronic voting via the Internet.
• Many experiments on local/institutional level
• Only few large-scale tests (UK, NL)
• Countries with frozen projects (B)
• Academic work with tests (D, A)
• CoE standardization efforts will drive
  development

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Contact

• Robert Krimmer
• University of Linz
• Institute for Informatics in Business and
  Government
• Vienna University of Economics and Business
  Administration
• Institute for Information Processing, Information
  Economics and Process Management
• e-Mail robert_at_krimmer.at