Estonian Internet Voting Called a Success

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.

Re:Wont work in US

[jdigriz]

Ever heard of the absentee ballot?

This should not exist

[El Cabri]

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.

Re:Direct Democracy

[bigg_nate]

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.

Re:Direct Democracy

[dubl-u]

. 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 bell curve when it comes to time put in prepping for a vote, and I still feel unprepared to judge some of the issues that get handed over to me. TV advertising often wins the day.

Second, direct democracy often produces relatively fragmented, incoherent results. California's tax collection and state budget process is royally screwed up, in large part due to direct democracy The people vote to limit taxes in various ways. Then they vote to set aside specific chunks of revenue for certain high-profile things. Low-profile but important things get short shrift, and rigid ballot-imposed rules limit flexibility in the face of emergencies and changed circumstances.

Thanks, I'm happy to delegate most of this work to smart people and let 'em get on with it. There are ways to improve our democracy, but more direct democracy doesn't help.

Re:Direct Democracy

[lawpoop]

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.

Re:A success? With a 1% turnout?

[bypedd]

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.

Re:This should not exist

[Short Circuit]

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?

Paperless voting

[sicking]

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.

Re:Isn't Estonia that "fake country" in Dilbert?

[rossdee]

"and they've only been free since 1992)."

Estonia was an independent country between the 2 world wars, as were the other baltic states (Latvia and Lithuania)

Re:Privacy?

[QuantumG]

There are cryptographic solutions to this problem. Off the top of my head I can't think of a system that would work, but you can be sure there are many possibilities. All you have to do is seperate identity from authorization and then provide your vote. i.e., you need authorization to vote, and you need to identify yourself to get authorization, but it can be cryptographically shown that you can't tie the authorization token to the identity.

Skype is from Estonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Estonia: origin of Hotmail, Kazaa and Skype.

They have no idea if the system worked or not.

[PotatoHead]

---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.

Henhouse, meet fox, the new guard.

[zippthorne]

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 quantity and complexity is important.

*also consulting as to the implications of law, but that's really just an extension of the advocate role.

Putting lawyers in charge of writing law is like like letting politicians dictate campaign finance rules and .. oh crap.

Re:Well...

[Anonymous Coward]

The client system works on Windows, Linux(x86) and OSX Tiger