Title: Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processes
1Citizen 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
2- How come Electronic Voting has become such a big
issue, when its just about counting 1 and 1?
3Overview
- What is E-Voting?
- Why is E-Voting interesting?
- How to preserve anonymity?
- The European experience
- Standardization efforts
4E-Governance
E-Democracy
E-Government
E-Participation E-Voting
E-Administration
5(No Transcript)
6Instruments of E-Democracy
Political Process (iii) Decision (ii)
Formation of an opinion (i) Information
acquisition
E-Voting
E-Mail
Chat
Web-sites
0
Infor- Uni- Bi- Trans- mation directional
actional
Technical Complexity
7What is E-Voting?
Local Remote
Paper-based Polling station Postal Voting
Electronic Voting Electronic Voting Machines Internet Voting (RVEM)
8Why 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
9Basic 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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10Solutions
- Preserving anonymity by hiding the vote
Homomorphism -
Ballot Sheet(yes/no)
Voter
Server
10110100 00111000 .... sum yes/no
10110100
11Solutions
- Preserving anonymity by hiding the voter TAN
-
Receives TAN by mail
Voter
Server
Enter TAN Ballot sheet
12Solutions
- 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
13European 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)
14European 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
15Council 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
16Council 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
17Resume
- 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
18Contact
- 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