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Estonian Internet Voting Called a Success

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Tue Oct 18, 2005 06:44 PM
from the rights-and-privileges dept.
The Internet Government Politics
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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[+] Politics: The World's First National Internet Election 297 comments
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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  • It's SUCH a success (Score:5, Funny)

    by ludomancer (921940) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:47PM (#13822555)
    Such a success, we got back twice as many votes as our population! We had no idea it would work so well!

  • Isn't Estonia that "fake country" in Dilbert? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:48PM (#13822563)
    Call me a geographically challenged USA-ian, but I think this must be a hoax.
    If you read the Dilbert cartoon, Estonia is the fake country with the bearded people

    And if it were real, I'm sure I would have heard of it buy now since all the real countries have obvious names like England, Mexico, Canada, France, etc. etc.
    I actually wonder about some of those -stan prefixed former Russian countries...do they exist?

  • A success? With a 1% turnout? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Starker_Kull (896770) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:48PM (#13822570)
    I wonder what would have had to happen for it to be considered a failure.
    • Perhaps it displayed a snappy song-and-dance number.

      "Hey, we're Estonia,
      We like macaronia,
      And it's time to voooote!"

      That would be a success of a kind.
    • I wonder what would have had to happen for it to be considered a failure.

      More people voting then are actually elligble would have been considered a failure. By the losing opponent(s) anyway.
    • [Less than] 1 percent of registered voters ... participated ..., but officials hailed the experiment as a success.

      Is Estonia an oligarchy? Maybe the "but" should've be a "therefore"...

    • Re:A success? With a 1% turnout? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bypedd (922626) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:50PM (#13823004)
      Although they don't suggest it, perhaps that 1% have mobility impairments and have never voted before, but now they get a chance. Obviously that's the best case scenario, but it seems a little ridiculous that there haven't been more efforts to expand the possibilities of voting. And scoffing at 1%? How many people do absentee votes in the U.S. (or any democratic country)? I would guess it's not more than 10%. And yet, for many, it's the only way they can vote. And absentee voting has been around for years, so I think 1% is not fantastic, but it's a good start.
    • Here in America, that'd be a significan percentage of the people who bother to vote at all.

      Actually, it'd probably be pretty neat if people could access a website with their cell phones to vote. Send a huge SMS message wave, and see all those kids actually bother to vote.
    • From the article, and the summary... "Fewer than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated *online* in elections for mayors and city councils across the country" (stars added by me)

      The vote wasn't exclusively online. Everyone else who voted did it the normal way- this just expands the options for casting your vote.

  • And in other news (Score:4, Funny)

    by kiore (734594) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:49PM (#13822581) Homepage Journal
    An unprecedented write-in vote by internet users sends Kevin Mitnick to the Whitehouse.

  • hacker voters.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by easterlingman (889205) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:50PM (#13822586)
    Were that to happen in the United States we'd get 500 million votes for Senator Linus Torvalds..

  • Privacy? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by zoloto (586738) * on Tuesday October 18 2005, @06:51PM (#13822594)
    To cast an online ballot, voters need a special ID card, a $24 device that reads the card and a computer with Internet access. About 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 proved effective and reliable and dismissed any security concerns with using it for the online ballot.

    Information is sparse, but does anyone know if votes were linked to who voted for what? And what kind of proof can we find that voting a particular way won't involve retaliation...? I'd like this in the USA, but I'm unsure /adjusts tin-foil hat
    • Information is sparse, but does anyone know if votes were linked to who voted for what?

      Do you mean are they supposed to be, or if they can be? I'm assuming they aren't supposed to be, but without a doubt they can be. The cards are used "for online access to bank accounts and tax record", so they clearly identify the user, which would be required to prevent duplicate voting, and thus they know who you are when you access the system. I'm sure they claim that they don't associate the user with the subseque

    • Re:Privacy? (Score:4, Informative)

      by frn123 (242374) <spam@nOspAm.imelaps.ee> on Wednesday October 19 2005, @02:58AM (#13824708)
      Find out it at http://www.vvk.ee/ [www.vvk.ee]
      Its the official Vabariigi valimiskomision (National Electoral Commitee) page.
      There is even an english section.
  • Because you still have to validate in PERSON that you are who you say you are. Simply put, our country must make sure no one else votes are your behalf.
  • I actually wasn't /that/ surprised that Estonia has such an internet-savvy political system. Estonia was one of the first countries to break away from the USSR (along with Latvia and Lithuania) as a result of the "Singing Revolution."

  • Diebold's officials . . . (Score:4, Funny)

    by ln -sf head ass (585724) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:06PM (#13822715)
    . . . downplayed reports of a test round of balloting in which tabulations resulted in George W. Bush as the winner of the election for Prime Minister of Estonia.

  • This should not exist (Score:4, Insightful)

    by El Cabri (13930) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:07PM (#13822722) Journal
    Voting over the internet, or any kind of distance voting for that matter, violates a very basic premise of the democratic process : that each vote is guaranteed to belong to the one in the name of whom it is cast. There is no guarantee with remote voting that the voter has not sold her vote, or that no pressure has been exercised on her.

    Voting should consist in having people go completely alone in isolated booths. A vote on a country's government is not an internet poll.

    • I don't know where you vote. But where I vote the identification process is: I say my name and I sign the voter roll and get a ballot. There is no checking of ID. There is no verifing the signature.
    • So you're against absentee ballots? That excludes many elderly, and a huge portion of the armed services. Oh, and anyone who's scheduled to work for the duration that the polls are open. Like me, this past presidential election. I made my voice heard through an absentee ballot provided by my township.

      And how can you verify that an absentee ballot was made without undue influence?
    • there is no guarantee with any kind of voting that the vote has not been bought - the only difference with distance voting is that people can look over your shoulder to check you vote the way you're paid to.

      however, the estonian system has several interesting measures to combat this. you can vote online as many times as you like - only your last vote will count. so once the mobster has left, you just vote again. also a paper ballot takes supremacy over an internet ballot, so voting in person in a secret
  • Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft, on hearing of the news about Estonia's good fortune utilizing Linux for their successful voting, purchased the country. The voting is now nullified with the purchase, however all citizens who voted will be given discount coupons on purchases of any Microsoft product.

  • Direct Democracy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lawpoop (604919) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:10PM (#13822743) Homepage Journal
    I see this and future use of internet voting as steps toward direct democracy. I predict that within this century, some countries will use direct democracy [wikipedia.org] as the legislative body on the local and regional level. Direct Democracy is where citizens can directly propose and vote on legislation, making representatives redundant.

    When democracy was first proposed, it was long argued by the elite that peasants were not smart enough to rule themselves; they needed kings to keep society from collapsing. Even the first democracies were collections of wealthy land-owning males -- almost 90% of the population, including women, slaves, and peasants, were not enfranchised into the government. Well, those naysayers were wrong, and commoners are perfectly capable of running representational democracies.

    The thing is, representatives are a compromise anyways. In days when farmers worked 14 hour days 6 days a week, no one had the time to travel meet up with everyone else to discuss politics. The American legal system is based on how long it takes a person travelling on horseback to transmit information.

    Now with the advent of the internet and other communication technologies, representatives are redundant. We could propose and vote on laws ourselves, over the internet. Problems such as authentication and verification have been solved in various communication systems. As soon as the general public gets the hang of internet discussions, people will see direct democracy as a reasonable alternative to representational democracy. This could happen within a generation or two.

    Of course, current politicians will resist direct democracy, because it puts them out of their incredibly powerful positions.

    • Re:Direct Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bigg_nate (769185) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:26PM (#13822848)
      The California proposition system is essentially direct democracy, and IMO it's a disaster. People aren't lawyers, and they aren't economists -- they simply don't have the skills to determine if a given law is good or not. This means we end up with ridiculous laws that sound good in a 4-word summary, like three strikes (tough on crime -- must be good!) and frozen property taxes (lower taxes -- must be good!). Additionally, as the battle over Native American casinos has shown, the public isn't any harder to buy than a politician.

      Direct democracy might work at an extremely local level, but the general public simply does not have the necessary knowledge to participate in large-scale direct democracy.

      • Please mod the parent comment up.

        People who have studied the American Constitution and the ideas upon which it was founded would recognize this debate as "Tyranny of the Majority." In essence, the founding fathers knew that the vast majority of the population would not have the necessary knowledge and skill to successfully judge laws. That is why they purposely instituted a series of checks and balances within a representative democracy.

        Direct democracy seems like a wonderful idea in theory, but as w

      • Re:Direct Democracy (Score:5, Insightful)

        by lawpoop (604919) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:47PM (#13822986) Homepage Journal
        As in my comment above, people said commoners weren't smart enough to rule themselves through representational democracy, thus they needed kings and royalty to rule them. It's a tired argument.

        However, you are right. People aren't lawyers, but nonetheless they are expected to follow the law to the letter. Try using this as an excuse in court: "But Your Honor! I'm not a lawyer! How could I be expected to follow the law when I can't even understand it? Why, I haven't even read it!" If people are smart enough to be expected to follow the law, they are smart enough to propose and vote on law. People are smart enough to do all of the above.

        If direct democracy is implemented in any serious manner, people will become familiar enough with the law to do it well. You would study it in civics class in high school. You would talk about it over dinner just like you do other subjects. People are smart enough to finance their homes, vehicles, and education; they are smart enough to run their own businesses, and they are smart enough to follow the law in everyday life. They are smart enough to recognize right and wrong and are fully capable of proposing and arguing rules over the internet.
        • People are smart enough to finance their homes, vehicles, and education; they are smart enough to run their own businesses, and they are smart enough to follow the law in everyday life.

          That's a good one. In reality, huge numbers of people aren't smart enough to do any of the things you mention, and a tiny fraction are smart enough to do all of them. If "people" were as smart as you suppose, we would live in a utopia filled with well educated, wealthy, upstanding entrepeneurs. But we don't do we?

          The fact
        • Exactly. The absolute last people who should be writing law are lawyers. Not only will they put all kinds of obscure jargon (allegedly to clarify things) but it is also an extreme conflict of interest. Lawyers make their money by serving as advocates on different sides of disputes over various laws.* They have a vested interest in increasing both the number and complexity of laws, thus justifying their existance as advocates. They have no particular interest however in writing good law. only the quant
    • . Direct Democracy is where citizens can directly propose and vote on legislation, making representatives redundant.

      If they do that, I'll up and move to a republic.

      Living in California, known for its frequent use of direct democracy via ballot initiatives, it's obvious to me that more direct democracy would not improve things. There are a whole host of reasons, but let's pick two:

      First, modern issues are complex, and most voters aren't willing to put in the time to study things. I'm on the high end of the
      • I think most of your criticisms are due to the fact that direct democracy is rather new. People made the same arguments about democracy in the 1700s and they were right -- democracy was messy, people didn't understand it, and it didn't work. It took the United States 20 years to go from the Articles of Confederacy to the Constitution. Talk about not having your act together!

        So you're not smart enough to understand current legislation in order to vote on it. Well, after it is passed by your representative,
    • tamper with. Corruption is the end of every good governing system.

  • Estonian e-voting a glowing success (Score:4, Funny)

    by IgnoramusMaximus (692000) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:15PM (#13822768)
    Estonian authorities have confirmed that the e-voting was a complete success and their faith in this 21st century solution was completely justified.

    "It was flawless", the Chief Election Commissioner said, and in apparent attempt to gloat over his critics, who were loudly warning of problems, he added: "And it proves that contrary to what those feeble Doomsayers were saying, we should not fear new technology, we should embrace it because it is new, shiny and made in America!".

    In related news, some confusion persists of the proper procedure of swearing the new Estonian President, Barney "The Pink" Dinosaur, and his vice-president Wet Noodle, both of the party "All Your Base Belong To Us". Additional complications for the traditionalists is the suprising new discoverery at the polls that apparently most Estonians turned out to be of the Jedi religion.

  • At first I thought it said Elbonia successfully had internet voting. I was actually amazed that the pointy-haired boss didn't manage to screw it all up and I eagerly awaited the cartoon panels that detailed Dilbert's success in deploying the systems...

    Then I re-read the /. post...

    Oh, Estonia, you mean it happened in the real world? Bah, no big deal.

  • Paperless voting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by sicking (589500) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @08:42PM (#13823321)
    How can this be any better then a paperless voting mashine that has gotten a lot of bad press in here lately? The fact that it is based on linux doesn't help one bit unless people can actually verify what code are running on the servers during the election. Blackbox voting is blackbox voting, no matter what anyone claims is in the box.
  • ---and even if they do have some idea today, they won't when they crank up the numbers.

    With electronic voting, the ballots are invisible. Nobody can be assured their ballot tallied is the same as their ballot cast. Period, end of story.

    If they tag the votes to the voters, they could audit to double check things, but that's a big problem too. You can't have a free will if those in charge know what your choices were. That's why we don't have votes tied to voters here. Our founders knew better.

    Without being able to personally identify the votes cast to the voters, they cannot be assured the system actually honored the voters intent. Open Source, closed source does not matter.

    It's the form the vote is recorded in that matters. Nobody can see electrons and other subtle physical things used to record machine useable voting records and that's the problem because it forces the people to vote by proxy. Where there is a proxy, manupulation of the process is going to happen. That's just how we are.

    If the votes are stored on physical media, then the results of the election can be known and trusted. Also, the act of indicating your voter intent and making the record is one an the same. --No proxy in most cases, save those goofy machines with punches. The voter knows the record they placed on the ballot and can walk away knowing their vote is correct.

    When it comes time for counting, machines can read the human made records and humans can watch that happen. Other humans can check the records and audit the machines. If it's all nuts, lots of humans can watch each other count all the ballots...

    As for this direct democracy crap, it's just a smoke screen. Oooh our leaders won't want to hear what we have to say. Bull shit. The electronic machines mean they don't actually have to, not the other way around!

    What better way to devalue the democratic process. Make it easy and quick. Fewer expectations that way, and it's supposedly cheaper too!

    Want an informed and active population that actually self-governs? Put the process in their hands, not some corporation or other exclusive club. There are always plenty of people able to help run the election, we don't need the machines and never will.

    These poor fuckers are going to watch their democracy evaporate one machine at a time. Watch that nation and see if it runs significantly different in the near term. When the people are no longer a check on their own government, things will change for the worse.

    Look at the USA for clear evidence of that.

    30 percent of our national vote was cast with invisible ballots. We have no fucking idea who won '04, only who says they won.

    • Why on God's Green Earth should anybody care about Estonians voting besides Estonians?

      Because voting via the internet is something many Americans are interested in, so they're interested in attempts at making it work.

      Slashdot should stick to what it does best tech news a week late.

      You mean like they did with this article? Or is internet voting not considered tech news?
    • >...hopefully that blunt statement will minimize the "yeah but does it run..." comments - time will tell.

      I imagine they needed a beowulf cluster of linux machines for the election. Of course, it it was still Soviet Estonia, linux would have run on the election!

    • Re:i disagree.. (Score:4, Informative)

      by aussie_a (778472) on Tuesday October 18 2005, @07:04PM (#13822694) Journal
      Are you saying that only 49% of the population COULD have voted at all in the election? If so you're severly misinformed. 1% isn't the total number of people who voted, but the total number of people who voted online.

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