Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processes Presentation at ESF TED Workshop Helsinki, May, 20th 2004 Robert Krimmer University of Linz, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 2 How come Electronic Voting has become such a big issue, when it‘s just about counting 1 and 1?

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 3 Overview What is E-Voting? Why is E-Voting interesting? How to preserve anonymity? The European experience Standardization efforts

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 4 E-Governance E-DemocracyE-Government E-Participation E-Voting E-Administration

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 5

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 6 Instruments of E-Democracy 0 Technical Complexity Political Process (iii) Decision (ii) Formation of an opinion (i) Information acquisition Infor-Uni-Bi-Trans- mationdirectional actional Web- sites Chat E- Voting

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 7 What is E-Voting? LocalRemote Paper- based Polling stationPostal Voting Electronic Voting Electronic Voting Machines Internet Voting (RVEM)

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 8 Why 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

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 9 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 Basic Issues

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 10 Solutions Preserving anonymity by hiding the vote: Homomorphism VoterServer Ballot Sheet (yes/no): sum yes/no

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 11 Solutions 2.Preserving anonymity by hiding the voter: TAN VoterServer Enter TAN & Ballot sheet Receives TAN by mail

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 12 Solutions 3.Preserving anonymity by hiding the voter: Blind signature One-step procedures Two-step procedures Election Day Identification & Vote casting Election Dayx days beforehand (1) Identification(2) Vote casting Voting token

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 13 European 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)

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 14 European 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

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 15 Council of Europe Standardization efforts started end of 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

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 16 Council of Europe Standardization 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

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 17 Resume 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

Citizen participation using electronic voting for decision making processesSlide 18 Contact 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