Manuel Kripp of E-Voting.CC reports:
From November 14-15 I attended the Conference on Advanced Voting Techniques organized by the National Election Office of Hungary in Budapest. I took part as a representative of the Competence Center for Electronic Voting and Participation in Vienna.
We were happy to be invited and to get the chance to speak about the use of Information and Communication Technology in the electoral process.
An important personal result from this conference was, that many countries are considering electronic voting, especially Internet voting as a very interesting voting channel of the future. On the other hand the current legislation, political will and a positive feedback from the voters are missing. Therefore I hope that we could provide the participants with a few good arguments in favour of E-voting.
One important distinction has to be made between electronic voting by E-Voting Machines (EVM) and Remote or Internet-Voting. This was not clear to every participant.
Internet voting can be of perfect use for long distance voting from embassies or consulates furthermore it leaves space for a lot of creative usage to bridge the distances between your home country and your current location.
The current development is still in favour of postal voting, countries like Sweden, Germany are already using it and Austria will implement for its next elections. Central and Eastern European countries like Romania or Hungary are considering it for the possibility of absent ballots within the country and perhaps E-voting in the embassies far away.
The trendsetters in Europe with regards to E-voting are definitely Estonia and Belgium. Both are using electronic voting as an additional channel. Belgium uses EVMs in the city of Brussels to facilitate and improve the counting of votes with an average advantage of five hours towards the regular counting measures. Estonia is the trendsetter for Internet voting, they were the first ones providing a full working internet voting channel at regional and national elections. In both elections the system worked well and from the first two the second one the use of the new voting channel doubled. It is still at a comparable low level of 3% out of the complete turnout.
To summarize my experience, I have to admit that there are many challenges we will face to implement electronic and Internet voting. It will a tough road to convince the public and the politicians from the advantages and security of Electronic voting. But there is a sense and a rising understanding in the administrative minds behind elections. This is the clear outcome of the conference and the tenor of my two interview partners at the end of the conference.
Last but not least I like to thank the organizing team especially to Balasz and Attila. Thank you for taking care of me and organizing everything so perfectly. I enjoyed the conference very much.
Stephane de Mul, Head of the Belgium Election Unit in the interview right after the conference
link to the video on youtube
Gregor Wenda from the Austrian Ministry for Interior in the interview after the conference
link to the video on youtube
Slides-of-the-presentation-in-Budapest (pdf, 1,468 KB)
From November 14-15 I attended the Conference on Advanced Voting Techniques organized by the National Election Office of Hungary in Budapest. I took part as a representative of the Competence Center for Electronic Voting and Participation in Vienna.
We were happy to be invited and to get the chance to speak about the use of Information and Communication Technology in the electoral process.
An important personal result from this conference was, that many countries are considering electronic voting, especially Internet voting as a very interesting voting channel of the future. On the other hand the current legislation, political will and a positive feedback from the voters are missing. Therefore I hope that we could provide the participants with a few good arguments in favour of E-voting.
One important distinction has to be made between electronic voting by E-Voting Machines (EVM) and Remote or Internet-Voting. This was not clear to every participant.
Internet voting can be of perfect use for long distance voting from embassies or consulates furthermore it leaves space for a lot of creative usage to bridge the distances between your home country and your current location.
The current development is still in favour of postal voting, countries like Sweden, Germany are already using it and Austria will implement for its next elections. Central and Eastern European countries like Romania or Hungary are considering it for the possibility of absent ballots within the country and perhaps E-voting in the embassies far away.
The trendsetters in Europe with regards to E-voting are definitely Estonia and Belgium. Both are using electronic voting as an additional channel. Belgium uses EVMs in the city of Brussels to facilitate and improve the counting of votes with an average advantage of five hours towards the regular counting measures. Estonia is the trendsetter for Internet voting, they were the first ones providing a full working internet voting channel at regional and national elections. In both elections the system worked well and from the first two the second one the use of the new voting channel doubled. It is still at a comparable low level of 3% out of the complete turnout.
To summarize my experience, I have to admit that there are many challenges we will face to implement electronic and Internet voting. It will a tough road to convince the public and the politicians from the advantages and security of Electronic voting. But there is a sense and a rising understanding in the administrative minds behind elections. This is the clear outcome of the conference and the tenor of my two interview partners at the end of the conference.
Last but not least I like to thank the organizing team especially to Balasz and Attila. Thank you for taking care of me and organizing everything so perfectly. I enjoyed the conference very much.
Stephane de Mul, Head of the Belgium Election Unit in the interview right after the conference
link to the video on youtube
Gregor Wenda from the Austrian Ministry for Interior in the interview after the conference
link to the video on youtube
Slides-of-the-presentation-in-Budapest (pdf, 1,468 KB)
manuel.kripp - 27. Nov, 20:43
