Remote voting civil initiative in Slovakia needs 50k signatures

Source: Google Images

When discussing the technology involved in running an election, most conversations turn to voting machines, for example, or they may talk about the infrastructure involved in recording, tallying and transmitting the ballots as part of an election. By large, the vast majority of ballots cast in an election are done in person in some form or another, but it is just as important to consider the voting rights of citizens who are unable to make a physical appearance at an official polling place on Election Day. And this was a hot topic issue leading up to the presidential elections in Slovakia earlier this year.

After no candidate was able to secure a majority in the first round of voting on March 15, a second round of voting was conducted on March 29 in which Andrej Kiska defeated Robert Fico with 59.38% of the popular vote. Part of the problem with this election was that it effectively did not allow for true remote voting. The current Slovak law says that citizens without permanent residence in the country can vote, but they must be present on Election Day. There is no support for remote voting, since this cohort “still isn't numerous enough to make it worthwhile investing such an amount of money”, according to Slovakia's Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák.

To demonstrate the interest and desire of the Slovakian people in Internet voting and support for remote voting for those living abroad, a civic association of Slovaks living abroad has put together a petition. As it stands, expatriate Slovaks can vote via the postal service, but having an Internet-based system could make it easier for voters to engage and participate. The petition seeks to get at least 50,000 signatures before being delivered to the Slovak parliament.

The two main reasons cited by Kaliňák as to why Internet voting is not yet viable in Slovakia are related to cost and security risks. These are issues that have also been raised in other countries around the world, but they have also been suitably addressed by voting experts like William J. Kelleher, Ph.D. He says that most hacking jobs “are the result of human insiders abusing their positions” and not the fault of the voting technology itself.

Indeed, recent expansions in remote voting technology have already been successfully demonstrated in Australia and the Philippines. However, if the petition is able to get the 50,000 signatures it desires, this would provide a clear illustration to the Slovak government that a large contingent of the Slovak people, particularly those living and working abroad, are calling for an updated electoral system where they are better able to cast a remote vote without having to rely on a more archaic postal-based system.

The 2014 Slovak presidential elections have come and gone, but the civil initiative of those Slovak expatriates still have several months to get the signatures they need. The goal is to collect the 50,000 signatures in 12 months, which would give them a soft deadline of January 2015. 

Estonia opens i-voting source code to the public

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.