[Clips] Estonians vote in world's first nationwide Internet election

[R.A. Hettinga]

--- begin forwarded text


 Delivered-To: clips at philodox.com
 Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:11:31 -0400
 To: Philodox Clips List <clips at philodox.com>
 From: "R.A. Hettinga" <rah at shipwright.com>
 Subject: [Clips] Estonians vote in world's first nationwide Internet election
 Reply-To: rah at philodox.com
 Sender: clips-bounces at philodox.com

 <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/12903730.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp>

 The San Jose Mercury News

 Posted on Fri, Oct. 14, 2005?

 Estonians vote in world's first nationwide Internet election




 TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - This tiny former Soviet republic nicknamed
 ``e-Stonia'' because of its tech-savvy population is breaking new ground in
 digital democracy.

 This 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 conducted Monday to Wednesday as a success.

 Election officials in the country of 1.4 million said they had received no
 reports of flaws in the online voting system or hacking attempts.

 But critics say the fact that no problems emerged shouldn't give people
 comfort that Internet voting is safe from hacks, identity fraud and vote
 count manipulation. Potential attackers, they say, may simply wait until
 Internet voting is more widely used -- by which time it would be harder to
 stop.

 In the United States, the Pentagon canceled an Internet voting plan for
 military and overseas citizens in 2004 because of security concerns. Plans
 for large-scale voting in Britain have also been dropped.

 ``The benefits don't come anywhere near the risks,'' said Jason Kitcat, an
 online consultant and researcher at the University of Sussex, England.
 ``It's a waste of money and a waste of government energy.''

 He acknowledged that Estonia's system was the most secure to date, but said
 no system was ``good enough for a politically binding election.''

 Thousands of people voted online in Democratic primaries in Arizona in 2000
 and Michigan in 2004. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, has held several
 online referendums, the first in January 2003.

 But Estonia is the first to extend it to voters nationwide, experts said.

 ``They have the perfect population size to do something like this,'' said
 Thad Hall, a University of Utah political scientist and co-author of a book
 on Internet voting. ``As they have success, people will start to copy their
 success.''

 Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly
 communist eastern European state.

 It gave the Linux-based voting system a trial run in January, when about
 600 people voted online in a referendum in the capital, Tallinn. The plan
 is to allow online voting in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.

 ``I believe this is the future,'' said Mait Sooaru, director of an Estonian
 information logistics company who cast his electronic ballot Monday. ``It
 was easy and pretty straightforward.''

 To cast an online ballot, voters need a special ID card, a $24 device that
 reads the card and a computer with Internet access. Some 80 percent of
 Estonian voters have the ID cards, which have been used since 2002 for
 online access to bank accounts and tax records.

 Election committee officials said the ID card system had proven effective
 and reliable and dismissed any security concerns with using it for the
 online ballot.

 Arne Koitmae, of Parliament's elections department, said Internet voting
 would make it easier for people in remote rural locations to vote.

 Election officials said only 9,317 people out of 1.06 million registered
 voters opted to vote online. Estonians were also given the option of voting
 by mail and in person on Sunday.

 Koitmae said many ID card users still lack the reading device, which
 explains the low turnout of online voting.


 --
 -----------------
 R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
 The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
 "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
 [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
 experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
 _______________________________________________
 Clips mailing list
 Clips at philodox.com
 http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips

--- end forwarded text


-- 
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

---------------------------------------------------------------------
The Cryptography Mailing List
Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to majordomo at metzdowd.com