Identification of the European Parliament election results in Estonia lasted nearly a week. Of paper ballots was over several times and was a voter will be shown later in post. Far more attention was the lack of opportunity to follow-up e-voting system and the structure of the disadvantages.
So far, the world used the concept of e-voting system where the voter goes to the station and make a decision through the intermediary of the computer. Estonia among the closest neighbors were used valimismasinaid last municipal elections in Finland 2008th in October. I wrote 5th November Kesknädalas how three of Finland's area is organized proovihääletus gone unproblematic.
Elections used valimismasina created TietoEnatori director Jukka Iivonen said the error was not in the system, but people understand the behavior of the system and receiving. This year's 29th January in Helsinki was an administrative decision in this proovihääletusel the cancellation of the results, because valimismasinad proved to be problematic for people. Machines failed to vote or did not return a completed electronic voter. Although the number of invalid e-voting was only 1.9 per cent, this was not considered sufficient for democratic elections. Finland understood that every voice has the weight and none should be lost because of valimismeetodi.
E-voting in Estonia sows confusion
In Estonia, but the e-election system in such a way that, in essence, a voter may also be the location of your polling location. Such spreading across the country makes it impossible for the election to allow the allocation of secure networking of computers or valimismasinate. For this reason, the system never knows in advance, simply turn to select either the voter or the malicious intentions of a character.
Perhaps the small size of Estonia and the lack of influence in Europe have been circumstances, why do not you want e-voting system to attack whenever considerably. It would be recalled that the Bronze Night War cyber-organization of the computer has been convicted of only one, which charges according to several newspaper suutiski cripple the server of their work but at home the computer.
If a vote would take place valimismasinas, it would be possible to later discover the error will occur. For example, in Finland found that out the problem, compared to valimismasina use of electronic cards issued to people and the number of votes, and their difference saadigi error tracing.
Estonia's system does not have such a follow-up possible. The user on your computer according to the best of its knowledge of e-voting procedure, and have a voice "black box". What's more it occurs, it is not known and no longer post. However, placing each voter's ballot is not possible to check on your computer, whether it is still way to the end of voting. In essence, it is not possible to distinguish the system are logged proovijaid and katkestajaid those who wanted to vote for, while, however, whether the lack of knowledge or due to technical problems (lack of software, the disruption of a digital signature giving program) could not complete the vote.
Experiment may have sad consequences
The main problem is the lack of opportunity to follow-up of the votes. The voter does not know whether the selection went to his letter, he went to a candidate or confirmed in accordance with the requirements. In this regard, we have only the word creators of the system - nothing more. Nor is the Electoral Commission to check whether the voting page www.valimised.ee have said it seamless to users. We know only succeeded in voter turnout. If, however, has been a lot of those cases where, although tried to give voice, as well as computer hardware and software because of the difference is not successful?
European Parliament elections, was 6.5 per cent of the votes cast electronically. The remaining 93.5 percent used the traditional demokraatiavahendit - valimissedelit. But in a situation where the balance of power between different political parties are so meager, that can also be decisive for hundreds of votes should not be used in a system that has not been fully Electoral controlled conditions, a uniform method for detecting errors, or even post.
Reading Internet forums can be found in dozens of cases reported in which a user's computer could not cope with the implementation of e-voting. Probably never fails to prepare with all operating systems equally effective ID card solution, since different versions are simply too many. Voters should not be discriminated against because of this, depending on their acquired computer and use a uniform voting system for elections only.
Estonia, the restoration of democracy is not even over 18 years, but does, however experiment is the e-voting in those countries where democratic traditions have been many times longer.
Article appeared in 17th June 2009 newspaper midweek
