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The World's First National Internet Election
Posted by
samzenpus
on Wed Feb 21, 2007 08:04 PM
from the vote-through-the-tubes dept.
from the vote-through-the-tubes dept.
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?"
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Technology: Estonian Internet Voting Called a Success 291 comments
composer314 writes "The Associated Press is reporting that the small European nation of Estonia has conducted large-scale voting over the Internet. From the article: "Last 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 as a success." The system is built on Linux." I guess it works well when the Internet is considered a human right.
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Technology: Out With E-Voting, In With M-Voting 161 comments
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.'"
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Well.. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. When people don't vote, it is not usually because they know so little about politics that they don't know who to vote for, but rather because they know so much about politics that they know there is nobody to vote for.
I have never voted. No party respects the values of equality, freedom and democracy that I have.
If all the non-voters came out, they would boost the slightly-progressive vote considerably, and perhaps prevent the worst excesses of the craziest parties.
Parent
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
That brings up a good point. If there were an "abstain" column, then you could show your interest in politics by participating, but also show your disdain for the available candidates, by choosing neither of them.
If it is the case that a large portion of America doesn't vote because they don't like the choices, this would be an interesting way to track that.
Parent
Re:Vote blank (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely there must be a way for you to vote for "none of the above" as Per Abrahamsen says. For example in Mexico you can cross out the whole ballot to make your vote null. It is still counted but it's not alloted to anybody. And it is usually a good measure of protest. High intentionally nullified vote count is always given a lot of air time and puts pressure on the government to take some corrective actions.
The problem I see with this is that they just know you are not happy, but there is no other mechanism to provide feedback as to what are you actually upset about. Best way is always to get involved. Support those that most closely resemble our values (in the real world nobody will ever match our values 100%), or if they are truly appalling, start our own, join one and change it from inside, etc. Inaction only gives the fascists currently in power to continue turning the US in a police state and that is bad for you and bad for the rest of the world given the USA's power and penchant for meddling in other people's affairs :P
I'm not trolling, if somebody disagrees please reply, don't just mod me down =P
Parent
Re:Vote blank (Score:5, Interesting)
The logic behind that kind of statements escape me. If we have the half the population of LA, we also have the same population as half of LA. So have a paper ballot in one half of LA, and another paper ballot in the other half of LA, and add the results.
Hvor svært kan det være?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Well.. (Score:4, Funny)
They will be leaving the US behind...right up until their "secure" internet election elects "That goatse guy"...
Parent
Ladies and Gentleman... (Score:4, Funny)
They guy got his name at the top of the list for a bridge somewhere. Named a team mascot somewhere 'Cobeagle The Eagle' or some such. Why? Presidency is the next logical step! He is quite well versed in addressing 'the nation'. And this is the perfect opportunity. He has got to be planning this in his secret lair somewhere.
Parent
Perhaps we can do away with parliments (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Re:Perhaps we can do away with parliments (Score:5, Insightful)
A really, really bad idea. It's called mob rule, or the tyranny of the majority. Unpopular, difficult decisions are (occasionally) made by governments. For example, in the US, the civil rights reform in the 60s.
Plus government funding would end up solely going to the most populous areas. Government services, on the other hand, generally cost more in rural, rather than urban, areas (for example, rubbish collection is cheaper in a city, where the truck has to go less distance between pick ups, than in remote locations).
Of course, the status quo is hardly nirvana either...
Parent
Re:Perhaps we can do away with parliments (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This should be modded informative.
I am feeling chattery tonight. The reasons you give are the ones that are usually given, but I am not convinced by them. One thing is for sure though: not only there are no direct democracies anymore, there hardly has ever been any, so we really have nothing to compare with.
USA, for example, has a very thick dossier [wikipedia.org]. Soviet Union, one of the least democratic countries out there, was a huge fan of a military action as well. Chinese states w
No, that is not the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Guys, in case you haven't noticed - history has shown that represen
It actually works that way in Switzerland (Score:5, Interesting)
It's called direct democracy.
And it's already the case in Switzerland. By law an change in the constitution must be approved by a referendum. Any law proposed by the public (a public initiative with enough signarutes) must also undergo mandatory referendum. Same goes for any international treaties (when Switzerland accept some treaty it's not in fact the country but the actual swiss population !). And any petition that collects enough signature can ask any other proposed law to undergo referendum, which happens almost always. Thus almost no law haven't been voted before being applied.
Although that sometimes people aren't interested about the vote, there's always at least one third of the population that participate in any vote (that's still a much more important and more representative part of the population than any assembly), and much more citizens get involved in more important votes (up to two third approximately. There's always a third that don't give a damn shit about what's happening and accept whatever the other want).
And unlike other
And the fact that we constantly vote (each few months) has three results :
- The population isn't fed up with voting. In fact at least one third of the population is getting used to the idea of always, no matter what, giving its opinion on the voted law.
- Being used to give its opinion makes that the population more often votes according its opinion of the law. The votes aren't used as ad hominem attacks to express disagreement with the politicians that are proponents of them (unlike what happened in France where the EU constitution was also partly refused because people disliked the politicians that encouraged the pro-EU vote, and note only because of the content).
- In the USA because the biggest part of the population contribution to politics are election and they only happen seldom, the different parties pile up a lot of money and then deploy campaign that start to look as marketing. In Switzerland nobody could afford spending that much money every couple of month and therefore, most of the information the public has comes from debates, from (non-paid-for by the government) journalists' articles, experts on the subject (economists / scientist / or whatever is related to the subject of the law being voted) from both camps give opinions, etc. Therefore the population tends to vote being more informed as enticed by ads, and end up accepting difficult decisions, fully knowingly the implications.
The only difference with what you said is that we don't use internet that much for voting (except for some pilot projects). Only as an information medium.
Voting is still mainly done by dropping an envelope in an urn, or by mail. But there are active development done to introduce e-voting in order to facilitate the voting procedure and attract a higher participation)
Parent
Well, if everybody else is doing it.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
- Succeptability to man in the middle attacks.
- Network outages / succeptability to DDoS attacks.
- Possibility of ISP censorship of votes.
In a paper-ballot election, it takes a lot of effort from a number of people (usually at least one insider) to fake a win. With electronic voting, a single person can do the job.Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Have your voting period over the course of a week. There's no rea
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
This is America buddy. We take pride in the fact that we don't realize how fucked up anything is. Except, of course, for other countries. We have a couple of sayings: "If it's not broke, take it apart and screw around with it, then it will be." and "If something's broke, throw it in the shed out back and go have a beer."
Re: (Score:2)
Whoa... (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Whoa... (Score:5, Funny)
Thanks for pointing that out , I guess the words World's First in the headline was not enough. [You have my sympathy.]
Parent
Re:Whoa... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apples and oranges. Many of the same factors that make a national election possible in a country like Estonia make it impossible in the US.
For one thing: The United States does not have a national election. The US has 50 concurrent state elections for federal offices. At the same time, there are 50 separate elections for state-level offices, and thousands of elections for county, city, schoolboard district, ward, etc offices, not to mention ballot initiatives, referenda, multiple-selection judicial contests, and so on.
A national election in a country like Estonia involves only one choice -- for party. Parliamentary seats are divided among parties based on the percent of returns for each party, and the party decides which of its candidates sits in Parliament. The party with the most seats nominates a Prime Minister who then appoints a government, which assumes power provided it has the approval of the Parliament.
If the party with the largest number of votes is unable to persuade the whole assembley to approve its nomination, the chance goes to the party with the next largest share of votes, and so on. Thus you can get some quite strange bedfellows in European coalition governments (like the Red-Green coalition in Germany until recently). But this is all separate and distinct from the voter, who has no say beyond party preference as to how the government is comprised or who the Prime Minister is.
Thus a national election in Estonia is one question on one ballot that is the same for the whole country.
In Maricopa County, AZ, last November there were 19 different initiative and referendum measures in addition to the usual slate of federal, state, county, city (Phoenix, Mesa, Tempe, etc), judicial, school board, etc. races that varied according to ward, precinct, township, jurisdiction, school board district, etc. While their ballot was one of the longest in the country in November, the same complexity and range of contests is true in any big city.
When you have one question on one ballot for the whole voting population, then internet voting is feasible. When your ballot is much more complex, much longer, and requires strictly validating voters according to location and eligibility, it becomes much more problematic.
Apples and oranges.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, none of those are really problematic. The Estonians had a national ID card, which was used to verify the voters. If you have a national ID card, it's trivial to attach address information (to validate location) and age (to vali
Dude, let's have an online election... (Score:3, Funny)
Well this is scary... (Score:4, Interesting)
Paper trail? Independent audits? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Paper trail? Independent audits? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Perhaps, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Come to my voting party on election day (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you safeguard against me holding a voting party on election day? I'll sit next to my partner and make sure the newfangled voting technology doesn't confuse her into making an incorrect vote. Me and my friends will keep note of who doesn't attend my election day voting party, we'll all watch each other vote so we know we agree on who to vote for. I'll also make s
From TFA (Score:3, Informative)
Xix.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How much discomfort would you endure for a war? (Score:2)
Suppose the issues were so important that, in the absence of the election, you'd have volunteered to fight in a civil war over them. How much discomfort would you endure to fight for your beliefs in that war?
Elections are NOT about being nice, or being fair, or because
How to stop bribery !? (Score:5, Insightful)
What measure did they take to ensure that no one looks over the voter's computer screen and bribe/threaten the voter ?
Re: (Score:2)
Democracy (Score:3, Interesting)
Getting rid of the middleman, so to speak.
I always thought voting for some guy who might have ideas that might be more to your liking than some other guy's is far from 'democracy'.
And how about some sort of incentive for people to vote on laws, like tax returns?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not that politicians are much better, but do you expect the public at large to have enough knowledge on a particular subject to make an informative vote for every measure they choose to participate in creating?What would prove most interesting is how discussion and amendments would be introduced in such a system. Best of all, we could have special interest groups spending money on attack ads all the time. The broadcast media receiving the ad money would be the winners every time.
Heck, let's make it real
Nice of them to let the 1337 h4xx0rs vote (Score:5, Funny)
Number of votes that will be cast in next Estonian election: 13,371,337
Bad idea for this reason (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Leaving behind secret ballot, security (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Are those IIS servers? (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. (Score:2)
Estonia != USA (Score:2)
In the US, and the most populated of its constituent states, it's difficult for someone to be reasonably certain they've got a handle on the situation, much less do something about it. This is due, in part, to the vast dispa
Re: (Score:2)
Local assemblies? Is that the same as "Soviets"? I am sure "all power to the Soviets" will do really well in Estonia. FYI, "soviet" is Russian for "advisory committee"... which were composed of... you guessed it... members elected by local assemblies.