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| Source: http://a.abcnews.com |
It has been demonstrated time and time again that
electronic voting systems result in thousands
of dollars in savings for elections and this is also true with the paradigm
of Internet-based voting systems. However, one of the biggest expenditures
needed to run an election that supports i-voting protocols is the development
of the election software. A bold move by the government in Estonia could help
to not only reduce costs for future automated elections, but it could also help
to improve transparency and security as well.
The Electronic Voting Committee in the country of
Estonia released
its electronic voting software to the open source community for viewing and
scrutiny. The source code for this software is now available through GitHub, a
popular open source platform on the Internet. It is important to note that
Estonia is only releasing the server side source code to the public and not the
client side.
This is not the first time that Estonia has made
the source code of its online voting system available to the public, but in the
past, people had to sign a confidentiality agreement before they were offered
the privilege of viewing the code. By allowing the source code to be viewed
openly and freely on the Internet, Estonia has given a boost to transparency in
its election system.
The country has been using its e-voting system
since 2005, implementing in five elections to date. Voters use the country's
mandatory identity card to cast their vote online. The voting platform can be
accessed from any computer and the voter can submit and change the vote all the
way up to Election Day. The identity card contains an electronic authentication
system that is at the heart of the security and integrity of the e-voting
protocol.
While it is still unclear whether online voting improves voter turnout, it has
been noted by Estonian Public Broadcasting (Eesti Rahvusringhääling) that 24.3
percent of all votes cast in the 2011 general elections were cast using the
electronic online voting system.
“This is the next step toward a transparent
system,” said Electronic Voting Committee chairman Tarvi Martens. “We welcome
the fact that experts representing civil society want to contribute to the
development and security of the e-elections.”
Nevertheless, there have been allegations that
the 2011 general elections were tampered with, as Tartu University student
Paavo Pihelgas found a security hole that would allow a virus to block votes to
certain candidates. The voter would not be aware that any tampering had been done.
This was never proven, but it did point out a potential problem. American
computer scientist Barbara Simons agrees that malware, insider threats and
other security risks make i-voting systems inherently
vulnerable to attack.
While some opponents to i-voting may say that opening the source code to the public could open up even more vulnerabilities, the open source approach will likely act more in the favor of Estonian elections. Just as major companies like Microsoft and Google host “hackathons” that challenge programmers to find security risks and flaws in their systems, the open source nature of the e-election software will allow programmers and experts from the general public to scrutinize the code, finding and reporting bugs and flaws back to government officials.
