p2pnet - rss feed: e-Stonia online elections
p2p news / p2pnet:- It’s called e-Stonia for a reason.
Heralding p2p in what will inevitably become one of its most telling applications, Estonia is the first country in the world to hold an election where voters cast ballots online.
“Election officials in the country of 1.4 million said they had received no reports of flaws in the online voting system or hacking attempts.”
But, warn critics, the fact that no problems emerged, “shouldn’t give people comfort that Internet voting is safe from hacks, identity fraud and vote count manipulation,” continues silicon.com.
Can you say Florida?
Anyway, Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state, continues the story.
“It gave the Linux-based voting system a trial run in January, when about 600 people voted online in a referendum in the capital, Tallinn. The plan is to allow online voting in the next parliamentary elections in 2007.”
Fewer than 10,000 registered participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, “but officials hailed the experiment conducted Monday to Wednesday as a success,” says silicom.com.
Voters used a special ID card, a $24 device that reads the card and a computer with Internet access, it states, adding:
“ Some 80 percent of Estonian voters have the ID cards, which have been used since 2002 for online access to bank accounts and tax records.”
Arne Koitmae of the parliamentary elections department is quoted as saying internet voting would make it easier for people in remote rural locations to vote and that according to him, many ID card users still don’t have the reading device, which explained the low online turnout.
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See:-
copyright trick - Estonians vote in world’s first nationwide Internet election, October 14, 2005
