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Delivered-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 20:11:31 -0400 To: Philodox Clips List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> From: "R.A. Hettinga" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [Clips] Estonians vote in world's first nationwide Internet election Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/news/editorial/12903730.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp> The San Jose Mercury News Posted on Fri, Oct. 14, 2005? Estonians vote in world's first nationwide Internet election TALLINN, Estonia (AP) - This tiny former Soviet republic nicknamed ``e-Stonia'' because of its tech-savvy population is breaking new ground in digital democracy. This week, Estonia became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet. Fewer than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, but officials hailed the experiment conducted Monday to Wednesday as a success. 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 critics say the fact that no problems emerged shouldn't give people comfort that Internet voting is safe from hacks, identity fraud and vote count manipulation. Potential attackers, they say, may simply wait until Internet voting is more widely used -- by which time it would be harder to stop. In the United States, the Pentagon canceled an Internet voting plan for military and overseas citizens in 2004 because of security concerns. Plans for large-scale voting in Britain have also been dropped. ``The benefits don't come anywhere near the risks,'' said Jason Kitcat, an online consultant and researcher at the University of Sussex, England. ``It's a waste of money and a waste of government energy.'' He acknowledged that Estonia's system was the most secure to date, but said no system was ``good enough for a politically binding election.'' Thousands of people voted online in Democratic primaries in Arizona in 2000 and Michigan in 2004. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, has held several online referendums, the first in January 2003. But Estonia is the first to extend it to voters nationwide, experts said. ``They have the perfect population size to do something like this,'' said Thad Hall, a University of Utah political scientist and co-author of a book on Internet voting. ``As they have success, people will start to copy their success.'' Estonia has the most advanced information infrastructure of any formerly communist eastern European state. 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. ``I believe this is the future,'' said Mait Sooaru, director of an Estonian information logistics company who cast his electronic ballot Monday. ``It was easy and pretty straightforward.'' To cast an online ballot, voters need a special ID card, a $24 device that reads the card and a computer with Internet access. 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. Election committee officials said the ID card system had proven effective and reliable and dismissed any security concerns with using it for the online ballot. Arne Koitmae, of Parliament's elections department, said Internet voting would make it easier for people in remote rural locations to vote. Election officials said only 9,317 people out of 1.06 million registered voters opted to vote online. Estonians were also given the option of voting by mail and in person on Sunday. Koitmae said many ID card users still lack the reading device, which explains the low turnout of online voting. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' _______________________________________________ Clips mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.philodox.com/mailman/listinfo/clips --- end forwarded text -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]