E-Voting.CC (Competence Center for Electronic Voting & Participation) : topic:News

EVOTE2010 participates in Pep-Net Conference Series

e-voting.cc — 2009-08-21T13:18:00Z

As a founding member of Pep-Net.eu, Europe's leading eParticipation blog and networking platform, E-Voting.CC is now participating in the "Pep-Net Conference Series".

The "Pep-Net Conference Series" is an initiative started by Pep-Net members, who are organizing conferences throughout the years 2009 and 2010. As a special programme there will be additional workshops lead by Pep-Net members and invited speakers.

E-Voting.CC is glad to also host a workshop during our EVOTE2010 Conference which will be held from 21st to 24th of July 2010.

Conference Proceedings EVOTE08 now online

e-voting.cc — 2009-08-06T13:35:00Z

Our Conference Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Electronic Voting, which was held from Evote087th to 9th of August 2008 in Castle Hofen, are now online. Exactly one year after the opening session we are glad to publish them on the web.

You can download the PDF here.

BMWF Publishes FAQ List for Student E-Voting

robert.krimmer — 2009-02-20T10:21:00Z

The Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF) published today - three months before the student union elections - a set of frequently asked questions around the e-voting process (in German).

Please see for yourself here at the bottom of the page [direct link].

It is also available at Studi.gv.at

E-Voting for Student Union named Top 10 Project in Austria

robert.krimmer — 2009-02-12T18:54:00Z

Salzburger Nachrichten, an Austrian newspaper, has nominated the BMWF E-Voting Project as one of ten most important projects in Austria:

"Salzburger Nachrichten" vom 12.02.2009 Seite: 3
Ressort: Hintergrund/Seite 3

Alexandra PARRAGH

Regierung der Arbeitsgruppen

Expertenflut. Die Regierung setzt auf Gruppenarbeit und wartet auf Lösungen.

[...]

Hier die Top Ten der wichtigsten und skurrilsten Gruppen:

[...]

6 Gruppentest ÖH-Wahl für Wählen per Mausklick Eine Arbeitsgruppe arbeitet schon länger am E-Voting. Bei der nächsten ÖH-Wahl im Mai 2009 soll Wählen per Internet erstmals zum Einsatz kommen.

[...]

Austrian Conference on "Chances for Political Participation through New Media"...

robert.krimmer — 2008-11-27T21:13:00Z

The Austrian Ministry of Science and Research organizes a conference on e-democracy where major Austrian and international stakeholders for participation using the Internet will discuss chances and tradeoffs thereof.

The conference will take place on the 3rd of december 2008, from 9 am to 5 pm in the Palais Harrach in Vienna.

After the opening by Minister Johannes Hahn, Pippa Norris from Harvard will present her thoughts and studies on the topic via a interactive line while residing in Boston. After that Thomas Buchsbaum will present his experience from drafting the Council of Europe recommendation on E-Democracy.

Then the first panel with reknowed speakers like Peter Filzmaier (Danube University), Fabian Breuer (EUI Florence) and Peter Parycek (Austrian Chancellery) takes place.

Afterwards, Robert Krimmer will present the E-Voting project in the Austrian Student Union which will then guide the participants to the lunch buffet.

In the afternoon three parallel sessions will discuss legal, technical and infrastructure issues around e-democracy, e-voting and participation in general.

In the technical session, Thomas Grechenig from TU Vienna will discuss with Alexander Prosser (WU Vienna), Gerald Fischer (TU Vienna) and Peter Purgathofer (TU Vienna).

In the legal session Robert Stein (Ministry of the Interior), Heinz Mayer (University of Vienna) and Melanie Volkamer (TU Darmstadt) and Heinz Zeger (ARGEdaten) will report about their views of possibilities to introduce e-democracy in Austria.

In the infrastructure session it will be Reinhard Posch (TU Graz), Volker Schörghofer (Social Security), Arthur Winter (Austrian Ministry of Finance) who will discuss the possibilities of the Austrian Citizen Card.

Finally Samir Al-Mobayyed, chairman of the student union and a representative of the Austrian University conference will reflect the possibilities of e-democracy together with Friedrich Faulhammer of the Austrian Ministry.

It will for sure be a very interesting conference and will benefit from a very lively debate!

Interested participants can register with enquete@bmwf.gv.at.

Read the full programme here.

OSCE proposes standard on Observation of Electronic Voting

robert.krimmer — 2008-11-04T10:06:00Z

The OSCE / ODIHR office in Warsaw released a proposal for guidelines on Observing Electronic Voting.

E-Voting.CC had the honour to contribute to this document and it has the chance after the recommendation of the Council of Europe on Electronic Voting in 2004 to be the second legal document serving as a multi-laterally agreed standard on observing electronic voting.

The discussion is still going on, ODIHR is welcoming comments and proposals for amendments.

The Next Step for E-Voting in Austrian Students Council

robert.krimmer — 2008-10-11T15:57:00Z

On 2nd of October 2008 the Austrian Minister for Science and Research Dr. Johannes Hahn published the decree "Hochschülerinnen- und Hochschülerschaftswahlordnung 2005" which forsees regulations for E-Voting in the elections to the Austrian Students Council.

It regulates:

- E-Voting will take place one week (from Monday 08:00 to Friday 18.00) before the paper-based election
- For identification and authentication the Austrian Citizen Card has to be used
- The Electoral Register makes use of the University Data Network ("Universitätsdatenverbund")
- Both voting channels (paper-based and electronic) will be supported by a election administration system

It is in line with §§ 34, 39 and 48 of the Austrian Student Union Law passed by the Austrian Parliament on 1st of February 2001.

Read more here.

You can also find the full text at the website of the BMWF.

Now the HSWO is also integrated in the online legal information system (RIS) here.

Discussion in the Austrian Parliament about e-voting

k.stoebich — 2008-05-15T10:10:00Z

The Austrian Parliament invited experts on e-voting out of politics and science as well as social scientists to discuss electronic voting as a future topic for Austria.

Michael Spindelegger, Vice-President of the Austrian Nationalrat and Karin Hakl, speaker of the Austrian people party (ÖVP) started with an enthusiastic talk about the necessity to participate in elections and the task of the state to offer possibilities to do so.

For Robert Stein, vice-chairman of the Austrian election management board the introduction of postal voting was a necessary act that has devitalized important arguments against e-voting. He promoted the need of legal and technical standards as well as pilot tests but emphasized that e-voting could be in use in Austria in the next few years. As Robert Krimmer, director of E-Voting.CC explained the ÖH-election 2009 with e-voting as an additional voting channel will be such a pilot test and bring important experiences in the use of e-voting for Austria. By observing other countries in the use of e-voting Austria could also benefit. Uwe Serdült, Vice director of the Institute for Direct Democracy in Zurich reported how the Swiss cantons deal with challenges by using e-voting in elections.

Helene Karmasin, director of Karmasin Motivforschung emphasized that grass-roots politics would be necessary to address tomorrows clients. The introduction of e-voting would be a clear signal to this special Lebenswelt. According to latest polls 30% of the Austrians have a positive emotional attitude towards e-voting. Despite this positive trend the participants agreed on that it is necessary to support an open discussion on trust and security matters as well as to strengthen political education amongst e-voting.

Download Robert Krimmer's slides here.

E-Voting Competition 2008

robert.krimmer — 2008-01-16T11:02:00Z

Today the E-Voting Competition 2008 started. Read more at the here.

E-Voting needs the right timing - Advanced Voting Techniques Conference in Budapest

manuel.kripp — 2007-11-27T19:43:00Z

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)

C't magazine reports about Dagstuhl e-voting seminar

robert.krimmer — 2007-09-05T11:39:00Z

At the beginning of August, the well-known Dagstuhl informatics center in Germany organized the "Frontiers of Electronic Voting" seminar. Participants included e-voting experts like Ron Rivest, David Chaum or Michael Alvarez. This prominent round was joined by E-Voting.CC director Robert Krimmer, who presented there recent research results of the E-Voting.CC database.

Richard Sietmann, one of the most profiled German journalists, who write about e-voting, worte a decent (and critical) report that gives a good overview of the meeting. He also interviewed David Chaum who wants to promote his Scantegrity end-to-end crypto voting scheme by giving it away for free to the first country or state using it. Scantegrity is basically an addon to a traditional paper-based election (but requiring optical scanning of the ballots - in Europe most elections are hand-counted) that adds the possibility of a vote to be verified without proofing a third person what the voter has voted for.

In my personal opinion end-to-end crypto systems are a new trend that add a feature not known before in (paper-based) elections. That's why they should be critically discussed - especially usability wise. Let's wait and see how things develop.

Overall the biggest hurdle to overcome in promoting electoral reforms are the politicans. They are the ones that have been appointed by the electoral process and any change to it will change their chances in being re-elected. Why should they promote the reform then? This assumption is based on a 2005 research article that I wrote together with Harald Mahrer from the Metis research institute in the Information systems journal where we interview Austrian politicans on their view of e-democracy. This is also what I meant in my quote on page 86, issue 19 of the c't magazine: "Die technischen und rechtlichen Aspekte sind gar nicht das Problem, sondern die Mittelsmänner, das heißt die Politiker, die für die Regulierung zuständig sind".

Special Issue of Journal of IT & Politics

robert.krimmer — 2007-08-22T22:18:00Z

Today, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics has agreed to fast track selected articles of the 2008 electronic voting conference to a special issue on "ICT in the Electoral Process" in 2009.

Newsletter #04: Zurich E-Voting Project Wins UN Public Service Award

robert.krimmer — 2007-06-26T08:17:00Z

Dear Readers!

It's been busy months since the last newsletter. The UK pilots took place, the Swiss agreed on further e-voting tests and received the UN Public Service Award.

At E-Voting.CC we were also quite active and we are proud on our new image folder (EN: http://www.e-voting.cc/files/ImageFolder_EN/,
DE: http://www.e-voting.cc/files/ImageFolder_DE/) and published a report on the Austrian e-participation project Mitmachen.AT (only DE:
http://www.e-voting.cc/files/WorkingPaper-1-2007/).

Further we continue to work on the database, we now have more than 200 entries, with nearly 145 on remote e-voting. So if you have uses of electronic voting machines please let us know as well! A first report is due to appear over the summer.

As always if you have any news on e-voting and e-participation which you want to share with the rest of the community feel free to send them to office@e-voting.cc.

Have a great summer, see you at one of the conferences in Dagstuhl or Bochum and hear you soon on the future of voting,

Robert Krimmer

________________________________________________________________________

| Short News |

- Zurich Wins UN Public Service Award
- Swiss E-Voting Laws passed
- The May 3rd Pilots in the United Kingdom

| Conferences, CfP |

- VoteID 2007
- Dagstuhl

________________________________________________________________________

____| Zurich E-Voting Project Wins UN Public Service Award |_____________

The Zurich E-Voting project, one of the three projects besides Neuchâtel and Geneva, has won one of the United Nations Public Service Awards which are handed over today at the 7th Reinventing Government meeting in Vienna, Austria. The project which features mobile voting from cell phones as well as via the Internet won in the category "Fostering Participation in Policy-making Decisions through Innovative Mechanisms" within Europe. See more http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/UN/UNPAN026042.pdf.

____| Swiss E-Voting Report and Laws Passed |_____________

The Swiss parliament acknowledged and praised the cautious and risk-aware approach of the Swiss chancellery towards e-voting and passed the further steps to be taken (Word protocol of the meeting
http://www.parlament.ch/ab/frameset/d/n/4715/236210/d_n_4715_236210_236330.htm) last year on December 9th. This year on March 19th the Swiss second chamber, the Ständerat, acknowledged the report of May 31st 2006 as well and passed the law, which foresees further e-voting test runs - limited in time, issue and place. Further the law includes the harmonisation of the register on cantonal level of Swiss people living abroad. This is a central precondition to further pursue E-Voting for Swiss citizens abroad (word protocol of the meeting at http://www.parlament.ch/ab/frameset/d/s/4716/241444/d_s_4716_241444_241572.htm). The final decision by the parliament has then been taken on 23rd of March (The passed law in reading http://www.admin.ch/ch/d/ff/2007/2293.pdf). Currently the facultative referendum time is running till 12th of July 2007 and then become law. Switzerland is going forward on e-voting in a thoughtful manner to collect experience. By the assessment of the Swiss chancellery it will take further 30 years until it is implemented fully on national level and all instruments are implemented like signing initiatives (see also http://www.parlament.ch/ab/frameset/d/n/4716/241309/d_n_4716_241309_241387.htm). One thing is sure - Switzerland is moving slowly but steadily on adopting information and communication technologies in their electoral process.

____| The May 3rd Pilots in the UK |____________________________________

On 3 May 2007, thirteen local authorities in the UK took part in twelve electoral pilot schemes. These were the latest in the series of pilots conducted as part of the Ministry of Justices (formerly the Department for Constitutional Affairs) Electoral Modernisation programme. The types of pilots include e-voting, e-counting, advance voting and signing for ballot papers in polling stations.
The purpose of the pilots is to learn more about:

- making elections more accessible, either by making it more convenient to vote or by making voting more attractive to people currently less likely to vote
- improving the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of electoral administration
- maintaining or increasing levels of security at elections The Electoral Commission are formally evaluating the pilots and will be publishing their report in early August.

You can get further information on the Programme at http://www.justice.gov.uk/whatwedo/may2007electoralmodernisation.htm.

Besides the official information by the Ministry of Justice there has been a local observer group ORG (Open Rights Group) who observed the May 3rd pilots. The effort was coordinated by Jason Kitcat who also organized the "European Electronic Voting Activism Workshop" in February of this year. While their judgement somewhat biased, it is an important effort to rationalize the debate on e-voting and the pro and cons of it. Read it here http://www.openrightsgroup.org/e-voting-main/.

____| VOTEID 2007, Bochum (Germany) |___________________________________

VOTE-ID 2007: First Conference on E-Voting and Identity Bochum (Germany) October 4 - 5, 2007

http://www.sirrix.com/content/pages/voteidcfp.htm

This workshop is the international research meeting point for e-voting experts from different disciplines: Computer Scientists (security, usability, availability, software engineering), Lawyers, Sociologist and Politicians.

Program-Chairs

Ammar Alkasar (Sirrix AG security technologies - GE) Melanie Volkamer (Institute of IT-Security and Security Law GE)

Program Committee

Josh Benaloh (Microsoft US)
Klaus Brunnstein (University of Hamburg GE)
Rüdiger Grimm (University of Koblenz-Landau - GE)
Marit Hansen (Independent Center of Privacy Protection - GE)
Dirk Heckmann (ISL University of Passau GE)
David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle (University of Applied Sciences of Bern CH)
Frank Koob (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik -GE)
Robert Krimmer (evoting.cc Wien- AT)
Ronald Leenes (Tilburg University NL)
Helger Lipmaa (University College London UK)
Sjouke Mauw (University of Luxembourg LU)
Margaret McGaley (NUI Maynooth -IR)
Lilian Mitrou (University of the Aegean GR)
Olivier Pereira (Université catholique de Louvain - BE)
Günther Pernul (Universität Regensburg - GE)
Andreas Pfitzmann (Technical University of Dresden GE)
Bart Preneel (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven BE)
Kai Rannenberg (Universität Frankfurt GE)
Peter Ryan (Newcastle University UK)
Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi (University of Bochum -GE)
Joseph Savirimuthu (University of Liverpool - UK)
Berry Schoenmakers (TU Eindhoven NL)

GOAL
The aim of this Workshop is to bring together e-voting specialists in order to discuss .
* all forms of E-Voting (including but not limited to polling station, mobile voting, kiosk or remote voting by electronic means)
* the role of identity and identification for E-Voting systems
* profiling aspects
* role of commercial voting systems; are commercial identity management systems suitable for e-voting?
* threats: identity frauds/theft, privacy issues
* usability and accessibility issues (both for voters and for
administrators)
* legal issues
* design and analysis of E-Voting schemes and protocols, their deployment and lifecycle concerns
* security requirements, formal analysis and evaluation of electronic voting schemes and systems
* concrete issues, like necessity of verifiability/digital receipts problems/anonymous channel in practise
* interdisciplinary issues involved (link between identity and digital identity and E-Voting )
* interrelationship with and the effects of E-Voting on democratic institutions and processes as well as voter behaviour
* social and political analysis of the effects of electronic voting
* new ways of solving the voting paradigm of unequivocal identification of the voter and full anonymity of the vote

Submission Guidelines

There is a strict limit of 12 pages. Follow carefully the LNCS instructions at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.
Send your paper to VOTE-ID2007@SIRRIX.COM until 31th July 2007 23:59
(CET) . All submissions should be anonymized (an author's name should only occur in references to that author's related work, which should be referenced in the third person and not overtly distinguishable from the referenced work of others).

Each submission should have a contact author who should provide full contact information (email, phone, fax, mailing address). One author of each accepted paper will be required to present the work at the workshop.

Submissions must not substantially duplicate work that any of the authors has published elsewhere or has submitted in parallel to any other conference or workshop with proceedings. Information about submissions may be shared with program chairs of other conferences for that purpose.

Accepted Contributions
Full paper submissions will be subject to a double-blind review.
Accepted papers will be available as pre-proceedings at the conference. The post-proceedings are planed to be published within LNCS Springer, including the feedback of the workshop discussion and after the final approvement by Springer.

Deadlines
Draft of the paper.................... 31th July 2007 Notification of acceptance ......3rd September 2007 Receipt of the final paper.........19th October 2007

Contact Address

Sirrix AG security technologies
Ammar Alkassar

Im Stadtwald, Geb. D 3.2
66123 Saarbrücken
Germany

E-Mail: VOTE-ID2007@sirrix.com

____| Dagstuhl E-Voting Seminar |______________________

Frontiers of Electronic Voting, Dagstuhl (Germany) 29.07. - 03.08.2007

http://www.dagstuhl.de/programm/kalender/semhp/?semnr=07311

David Chaum (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, B) Miroslaw Kutylowski (Institute of Mathematics & Informatics/TU Wroclaw, PL) Ronald L. Rivest (MIT - Cambridge, USA) Peter Ryan (University of Newcastle, GB)

Participation is only available upon invitation or approval by the committee.

Motivation

Democracy and voting systems have received considerable attention of late, with the validity of many elections around the world being called into question. The US experience demonstrates that simply deploying technological "solutions" does not solve the problem and can easily exacerbate it. Nevertheless many other countries are either deploying e-voting and e-counting systems or planning to do it.

The aim of the seminar is to present and discuss promising technologies, schemes, and cryptographic protocols to achieve high assurance of accuracy and privacy in the casting and counting of votes. Special attention will be given to attacks and dangers that emerge for electronic voting systems.

The challenge is highly socio-technical in nature: requires an excellent understanding of the potentialities and dangers of technological approaches as well as an appreciation of the social, legal and political impact. The seminar thus aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry, whose work relates to electronic voting systems, to evaluate the state of the art, to share practical experiences, and to look for possible enhancements. The overall aim then is to stimulate discourse between the various stakeholders and enhance the understanding of voting technologies and practices.
Detailed topics

Anonymity

Many e-voting protocols via Internet require anonymous communication channels between a voter and a voting authority. This has to protect a voter from being monitored and guarantee freedom of voting. Existing anonymous communication protocols do not provide full protection against advanced traffic analysis techniques. Particularly critical is the problem of an active, adaptive adversary. Satisfactory solutions on practical or theoretical level have not been developed so far.
Voter and ballot authentication

Ballot and voters authentication contradict privacy requirements.
While fulfilling only one of these goals can be achieved with existing techniques, authentication of anonymous data is a challenging task requiring sophisticated schemes.
Trustworthy voting machines

Voting machines should provide guarantees for accuracy and voters
privacy. Achieving this goal with standard devices is a hard task - the design principles and existing architectures contradict the requirements for secure voting machines. On the other hand, due to economic reasons special purpose hardware should be avoided.

Apart from technical security, voting machines should work so that a voter may be convinced about its honesty without a detailed audit of a
(black-box) machine on a high technical level. Preferably, no specialized voting machines should be necessary in e-voting.
Receipts and coercion resistance

One of principle techniques for controlling election process is using paper trails of electronic ballots. This technique, gaining acceptance in USA, has to protect against frauds by voting machines. The problem
2 is to balance evidence of fair vote counting and the danger of coercing the voter based on data contained in his receipt.
Election integrity and verifiability

A key issue for an e-voting process is to provide a simple evidence of fair counting of votes and lack of manipulations. Security of the scheme should be provided even if some of the authorities involved in the process collude. Possible techniques range from global verifiability (audit procedure requires all ballots) to local verifiability (it is possible to check if a single ballot has been included in the results).

Cryptographic attacks
Attacks against e-voting systems can be focused on breaking privacy of voters, breaking integrity of election results or manipulating them.
Even the possibility of breaking voters privacy may be disastrous for e-democracy.
Recent advances show that specialized attacks focused on these attack scenarios are possible. Attack scenarios are not confined to classical cryptographic attacks, but also may exploit communication framework, operating systems issues, kleptographic techniques, side channel attack and so on.
Formal security analysis and threat models Formal evaluation of e-voting protocols is necessary to provide necessary level of assurance and design tools for audit procedures.
This is due to the overall complexity level of voting systems in their complex social and technological environment.
Case studies of voting systems
Systems offered commercially have to be evaluated for suitability for fair e-voting. So far such systems do not fulfil all security requirements and need to be carefully inspected against possible threats.
Standardization
Developing working systems on the commercial market need developing industrial standards. The problem is that many design problems have not been solved yet. Currently we have to do with co-design of standards and technology.
Legal problems of e-voting
One of the major problems in developing e-voting technologies is diversity of legal frameworks for voting systems. The differences might be quite deep concerning such issues as limited anonymity in UK, a complicated election rules in Ireland. Finding legal concepts that would encompass most existing legal systems is also a question of economic feasibility of e-voting systems the technological should be mobile in the sense that they may be deployed in most countries with minimal adjustments.
Social issues of e-voting
Apart from technical and legal issues, the key problems in evoting systems is the challenge of social accessibility, acceptance and influence on voters behaviour. The systems developed need to be simple for use, understandable, but nevertheless provide full security. Many schemes proposed so far use advanced techniques hard to comprehend even for specialists - and therefore they are unacceptable for deployment.

[E-Voting.CC] Newsletter #03: Estonia premieres Internet voting incl. observation

robert.krimmer — 2007-02-21T18:21:00Z

Dear Readers!

It's election time! We and more over Internet elections have a turbulent time to come.

Besides the announcements of the Philipinnes and Hawaii, we will have
a major step stone in Estonia on March 4th. There we will see for the
first time a national election to feature Internet voting as a voting
channel. Furthermore this election will be observed by OSCE/ODIHR,
which will then be the first election observation mission of Internet
Voting.

Besides that the German GI will hold a working group meeting on Internet
Voting and the US E-Voting research center ACCURATE has issued its
2006 annual report.

And then I would like to thank you for your continued support of our
E-Voting.CC database. We have already received more than 50 documented
e-voting uses from around the world. Please continue submitting to
http://db.e-voting.cc.

Also I have good news from us - we have moved into a new office in the
19th district in Vienna. Please note therefore our new address and
phone numbers as you can find at the end of the newsletter.

Finally there are also two upcoming conferences that will deal with
new forms of voting and e-democracy in August 07 in Colorado and in
September 07 in Montreal.

This is it for now, hear you soon on the future of voting,

Robert Krimmer

________________________________________________________________________

| Short News |

- Internet-Voting planned for Citizens of the Philipinnes in Singapore
- Hawaii plans Internet-Voting
- ACCURATE issues 2006 Annual Report
- German Gesellschaft für Informatik holds Working Group meeting on
E-Voting

| Upcoming E-Voting Uses |

- Estonia, 4th of March 2007

| Academic Articles |

- Success Factors of Genevas e-Voting System. Michel Chevallier, et.al.
- e-Voting in the UK: A Work in Progress. Mark Liptrott

| Conferences, CfP |

- E-Voting Minitrack at ICEG 2007
- E-Gov & E-Democracy Minitrack at AMCIS 2007

________________________________________________________________________

!!! Please note to copy both lines if links go over one line !!!

____| Internet-Voting planned for Citizens of Philipinnes |_____________

The Commission on Elections (Comelec) launched yesterday Internet voting
for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) with Singapore, which has 26,835
registered absentee voters, as the pilot area. The system to be used will
come from the Spanish company SCYTL.

Read more at http://www.mb.com.ph/issues/2007/02/10/MAIN2007021086736.html
and about the process at
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view_article.php?article_id=48562

____| Hawaii plans Internet-Voting |____________________________________

Not only the Philipinnes will hold trials for Internet-Voting but also
Hawaii will trial Internet-Voting for the neighborhood board elections in
Honolulu. The election will start on March 23rd.

Read more here http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070219/NEWS04/702190334/1001/

____| ACCURATE 2006 Annual Report |_____________________________________

The ACCURATE Center for Correct Usable Reliable Auditable and Transparent
Elections has issued its 2006 annual activities report. It is available for
Download at http://accurate-voting.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/AR.2007.pdf

____| German Gesellschaft für Informatik ECOM Working Group Meeting |___

The German Gesellschaft für Informatik will hold a meeting for the
upcoming use of Internet voting for their working group ECOM on 12th of March
at the University of Koblenz. The program is as follows [in German]:

Thema: Elektronische Wahlen und die Internet-Wahl des
Fachgruppensprecher-Teams

=====
Programm:
=====
11:00-11:15 Begrüßung durch Prof. Grimm (Fachgruppensprecher)
11:15-11:30 Round-Table-Vorstellungsrunde
11:30-13:00 Teil I: Internet-Wahlen

1. 11:30-12:00:
Prof. Dr. Rüdiger Grimm, Uni Koblenz, Fachgruppensprecher GI-FG ECOM
Thema: GI-Präsidiums- und Vorstandswahen

2. 12:00-12:30
Melanie Volkamer, Geschäftsführerin des Institut für IT-Sicherheit
und Sicherheitsrecht in der Uni Passau, Autorin des CC-PP,
Mitglied des Präsidiums der GI:
Thema: Das CC Protection Profile für Internet-Wahlen

3. 12:30-13:00
Robert Krimmer, Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
Thema: State of the Art beim Einsatz von E-Voting in Europa

13:00-14:00 Mittagpause, Freies Essen in der Mensa

14:15-15:45 Teil 2: Andere E-Wahlen

4. 14:15-14:45
Asmus Rösler, Landeswahlamt Hamburg
Der elektronische Wahlstift bei der Bürgerschaftswahl 2008 in Hamburg

5. 14:45-15:15
Dr. Norbert Greif, PTB Berlin, AGr. Software und elektronische Wahlen
Thema: Sicherheit von Wahlgeräten (Wahlgeräteprüfung,
Manipulationen an Nedap-Geräten, Abstrahlproblematik)

6. 15:15-16:00
Diskussion E-Wahlen - Internet-Wahlen - Vereinswahlen - Politische Wahlen

16:00-16:30 Kaffeepause

16:30-17:30 Teil 3: Wahlversammlung der GI Fachgruppe ECOM

7. Vorbereitung der Internet-Wahlen für das Sprecherteam der GI
Fachgruppe ECOM
- Vorstellung des Verfahrens (Grimm)
- Vorstellung des Stands der Handlung (Helbach, Wahlleiter)
- Bestellung der Wahlleitung (Helbach und nn)
- Schluss der Kandidatenliste
- Vorstellung der Kandidaten
- Fragen

Find more here
http://www.gi-ev.de/fachbereiche/sicherheit/fg/ecom/html/wahl-2007-Programm.html

____| Estonian Internet Voting, March 4th 2007 |________________________

After the successful use of Internet voting in the 2005 municipal
elections Estonia is at it again.

To get an overview of the Estonian Internet voting experience
read the Council of Europe report on it at
http://www.coe.int/t/e/integrated_projects/democracy/02_Activities
/02_e-voting/00_E-voting_news/FinalReportEvotingEstoniaCoE6_3_06.asp

For this years election, interested researchers and observers can direct
a request for participation in the observation program to Mr. Vinkel at
Priit.Vinkel@riigikogu.ee. Further information can be obtained from
http://www.vvk.ee/r07/paeveng.stm

The Estonian election will feature another premiere, as the OSCE/ODIHR
will send for the first time an observation team to observe an Internet
election. The assessment missions report can be found at
http://www.osce.org/item/23131.html. Details about the observation mission
are here http://www.osce.org/odihr/item_12_23355.html.

____| Success Factors of Genevas e-Voting System |_____________________

Michel Chevallier, Michel Warynski and Alain Sandoz

In eight official votes between January 2003 and April 2005 authorities
in Geneva invited up to 90 ,000 citizens to test a remote e-Voting system
as a complement to traditional voting methods. Multidisciplinary teams
composed of legal, political, PR, security and computer science
specialists, strongly supported by the Government, participated in
creating the system which will be appraised by the Geneva Parliament
en 2006. This paper reports on the project, its results in terms of
numbers and socio-political profile of e-Voters, and its success factors.
All three authors were directly or indirectly involved in the project
from the beginning and are currently working on the deployment of Genevas
e-Government platform.

http://www.ejeg.com/volume-4/vol4-iss2/chevallier_et_al.pdf

____| e-Voting in the UK: A Work in Progress |__________________________

Mark Liptrott

The research project on which this paper is based is investigating the
reasons that some English local authorities engaged in pilot projects
of e-voting and some did not. This paper offers a brief summary of the
initial findings of the literature review as it identifies factors,
which impact upon the decision-making process of English local
authorities.

The factors identified include the local authorities attitude to
e-voting, their consideration of the citizens attitude to voting, the
risks to the integrity of the ballot and the changing political
environment instigated by central government. The analysis is based
on Rogers diffusion of innovations theory. Early results of this
on-going research suggest that in a voluntary situation where there
is an over arching organisation (central government) trying to introduce
an innovation to an agency organisation, Rogers diffusion of
innovations framework requires modification.

http://www.ejeg.com/volume-4/vol4-iss2/Liptrott.pdf

____| ICEG 2007, Montreal |_____________________________________________

New on-line decision making processes: from deliberative experiments to
on-line voting, 27-28 September 2007

http://www.academic-conferences.org/iceg/iceg2007/iceg2007-home.htm

How does the Internet transform the decision-making process ?
How Does it affect the traditional political system ?

The Internet has been envisioned as an innovative tool to revitalize an
apathetic political involvement on the citizens part and offers new
solutions to some traditional problems which have prevented people from
fully participating in politics because of the constraints they impose,
like time, size, knowledge and access. Many countries around the world
have experimented new systems and procedures which encourages citizen
to get involved with politics at a local or national level.

Nevertheless, the extent to which the use of Internet has really enhanced
the public sphere and introduced new actors in the democratic process
remains somewhat uncertain, as technical devices and protocols do not
systematically fit within traditional political systems and structures.

This mini-track invites researchers, practitioners and other actors to
present papers, case studies, on-line platforms or procedures addressing
this main issue and its various dimensions. Has the new process been
initiated by a civil actors mobilization (such as associations, NGO,
individuals) ? How have such systems been implemented ? Was it a shared
political will or a new communication strategy from politicians ? Have
the citizen adopted the new medium to voice their concern ?

We would also like to focus on the link between the medium and the nature
of the political participation: how does the medium affects the
participation in all its dimensions ? Does it modifies the structure of
the population traditionally involved with politics (young people or
anonymous persons more at ease with writing online than speaking loud in
public meetings for ex. ), the way they talk, intervene in politics,
invent new objects (blogs, films etc.) ? Are these new way of expressing
oneself within the public sphere (personal medium of mass communication
as Manuel Castells puts it) compatible with traditional political
communication ? How does new procedures take them into account to mobilize
citizens in politics ?

A more theoretical aspect of the session is the link between the
introduction of new technology within the decision making process, the
evolution of the process itself, and more fundamentally, concepts of
citizenship and representation in modern democratic countries. Many
scholars acknowledge the inclusive potential of the new medium and the
opportunity it gives to reconsider some fundamental aspects of the
democratic theory such as concepts of representation, citizenship and
collective action. Is (and how) the introduction of new participative
procedures modifies the structures of the political entity which implements
it ? Is the internet seen as a opportunity to establish a new relationship
with citizens and make the political system evolve towards a conception of
direct representation (S. Coleman) ? Can we witness a more active
conception of citizenship through new ways of practicing politics ?
Contributions analysing social, political, administrative, etc.
consequences of the introduction of ICT in decision making processes
are welcomed.

Feel free to address any type of contribution (research papers, case
studies, presentations, etc.) in this session as we are very much trying
to link technical systems and devices with more social, political and
theoretical issues.

Important dates
---------------

Abstract submission deadline: 19 April 2007
Notification of abstract acceptance: 26 April 2007
Full paper for review due: 7 June 2007
Notification of paper acceptance
(with possible changes): 19 July 2007
Final paper submission: 9 August 2007

In case of question please contact the Mini-Track-Chair Laurence Smith at
laurence.smith@club-internet.fr

____| AMCIS 2007 - Managerial and Social Aspects of E-Government |______

http://www.biz.colostate.edu/amcis07/Mini_Tracks/E_Gov-Managerial_and_Social_Aspects_of_EGov-Brandtweiner.htm

Americas Conference on Information Systems, Keystone, Colorado, USA
9.-12. August 2007

As the awareness for E-Government is increasing, governments all around
the globe are eagerly looking towards a digital future. Government
agencies are using technology to enhance the access to and the delivery
of government services for the benefit of citizens, business partners
and employees. But E-Government is not only about technology but impacts
every aspect of a public organization involved.

Further important aspects closely related to E-Government are computer
literacy, media competence of the citizens and digital divide issues.
Traditional E-Government research is regularly not scoping these topics.
Therefore we encourage especially papers dealing with computer literacy,
media competence and the digital divide in an E-Government context.

This mini track serves as a forum for the presentation and discussion
of new and innovative interdisciplinary approaches of E-Government for
coping with current and future challenges of pubic administrations.

The E-Government Track will cover a broad area including the following topics:

* E-Government Strategies & Implementation
* Planning & Managing E-Government Projects
* Impact of E-Government Projects
* International, national and local Case Studies
* Comparative Studies
* Barriers & Drivers for E-Government
* Success and failure of Public-Private Partnerships
* Bridging the Digital Divide
* Media Competence and Computer Literacy
* E-Democracy & Citizen Participation

Key Dates:

Papers Due: Monday, March 5, 2007
Notification of Acceptance: Monday, April 16, 2007
Camera Ready Copy Due: Monday, April 30, 2007

________________________________________________________________________

[E-Voting.CC] Newsletter #02: UK Pilots announced, European E-Voting Activism Workshop,...

robert.krimmer — 2007-02-01T18:30:00Z

| Short News |

- UK E-Voting Pilots announced
- European Electronic Voting Activism Workshop in London Feb, 8th
- Ron Rivest on how to do Recounts

| E-Voting.CC Activities |

- Extended Deadline for 2nd PhD Seminar
- E-Voting.CC Database of E-Voting Uses is growing

| Conferences |

- EVT07 - Electronic Voting Technology Workshop Aug, 6th 07
- Eastern Europe E-Gov Days Prague, Apr, 11-13th 07

________________________________________________________________________

Dear Readers!

Welcome to our second edition of the E-Voting.CC newsletter. A lot has happened in the past weeks, including some notable events in the United Kingdom, like the announcement of the pilot scheme for the may local Elections and an upcoming European E-Voting Actisim workshop taking place next week in London. Furthermore I wrote a guest commentary for the Public Servant magazine on the issues involved with electronic voting, i.e.
meeting the peoples need for transparency and mobility.

From our side we used the last weeks to consolidate the mailinglists we've been running (E-Gov, Online-Wahlen, E-Voting-in-Europe, ...) and moved them to a new server which also had the benefit of having a new mailman version that helps with SPAM protection a lot.

I would like to thank also the readers of the first newsletter that actually went right away to enter data in our worldwide database of e- voting uses - we got 25 examples right away. In case you haven't done so, please fill the survey out at http://db.e-voting.cc or mail us your results/working papers to office@e-voting.cc.

In case you have recommendations or think that something you know should be included in this newsletter, please send them to us!

Thanks for your support,

Robert Krimmer

________________________________________________________________________

____| UK E-Voting Pilots announced |____________________________________

A little bit later than expected, the Department for Constitutional Affairs finally announced the UK pilots on E-Voting for this May's local Election.

On 29 January 2007, thirteen local authorities were approved to take part in twelve electoral pilot schemes for the May 2007 local elections.
They were approved following an application process open to all local authorities. Both the Electoral Commission and the Association of Electoral Administrators have been fully consulted and involved in the selection process. The local authorities are:

* Bedford Borough Council
* Breckland District Council
* Broxbourne Council
* Dover District Council
* Gateshead Council
* Rushmoor Borough Council
* Sheffield City Council
* Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council
* South Bucks District Council
* Stratford-on-Avon District Council and Warwick District Council
* Sunderland City Council
* Swindon Borough Council

Find more at http://www.dca.gov.uk/elections/elections-may-07.pdf

____| European Electronic Voting Activism Workshop in London Feb, 8th |__

We are not only expecting E-Voting trials in the UK but also a very informed public about problems and hacks with E-Voting. The Open Rights Group is organizing an European Electronic Voting Activism workshop next Week, with live demonstration of the Nedap hack and a panel of experts including

Margaret McGaley (Ireland)
Colm MacCarthaigh (Ireland)
Anne-Marie Oostveen (The Netherlands)
Rop Gonggrijp (The Netherlands)
Dr Rebecca Mercuri (USA)

More information is available at

http://www.openrightsgroup.org/2007/01/16/taking-the-lid-off-e-voting/

____| Ron Rivest on how to do Recounts |________________________________

The National Election Data Archive (NEDA) has released a short paper explaining a new formula developed by Ronald Rivest of MIT to estimate the minimum audit amounts that are mathematically sufficient to detect vote count errors that could seat wrong candidates.
NEDA's paper and an easy-to-use spreadsheet to allow any layman to calculate how many vote counts to audit for a particular election contest, can be found at ElectionArchive.org.

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/ElectionAuditEstimator.pdf
http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/US/paper-audits/HowManyToAudit.xls

____| E-Voting.CC Database of E-Voting Uses is growing |_________________

Thanks to your help we have already more than 25 E-Voting uses in our database. Please continue to support our database. As you know E-Voting.CC is currently putting together the state of the art in Electronic Voting.
To do this we are conducting a study on the experience in trials, test as well as legally binding elections using means of electronic voting.

Please go to http://db.e-voting.cc to take part and support our effort to document all e-voting uses worldwide!

____| Extended Deadline for 2nd PhD Seminar |____________________________

Due to numerous requests we have extended the Deadline for the 2nd PhD Seminar till 14th of February. Until then please send us your 10 page abstract of your phd and a short cv to tagung-ewahlen@e-voting.cc.

Find more at http://www.e-voting.cc/stories/3154903/

____| EVT07 - Electronic Voting Technology Workshop |____________________

EVT '07 Call for Papers

http://www.usenix.org/events/evt07/cfp/

2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop (EVT '07) August 6, 2007 Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Sponsored by USENIX: The Advanced Computing Systems Association, and
ACCURATE: A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable, and Transparent Elections

EVT '07 will be co-located with the 16th USENIX Security Symposium (Security '07), August 610, 2007.

Important Dates
Submissions due: Sunday, April 22, 2007, 11:59 p.m. PDT Notification of acceptance: Friday, June 1, 2007 Final files due: Thursday, June 28, 2007

Full call is online, but note that usability and accessibility are areas of particular interest.

In particular, we welcome papers considering:
- Design and analysis of electronic voting schemes and protocols
- Deployment and lifecycle concerns
- Mitigating threats (including insider threats)
- Usability and accessibility (both for voters and for administrators)
- Legal issues, including how voting systems must comply with the ADA and HAVA, or the effect of intellectual property rights and nondisclosure agreements on voting system testing, certification, and deployment
- The technology standards process and how it should evolve

____| 5th Eastern Europe E-Gov Days |____________________________________

5th Eastern Europe e|Gov Days
11.-13. April 2007, Prague

All member states of the enlarged Europe are facing the challenge of ICT enabled transformation of traditional ways of Governance, ensuring efficient and inclusive eGovernment and decision making. The Eastern Europe
e|Gov Days as a joint event are providing a solid platform for learning
from each other and for ensuring technology transfer between Eastern Europe countries and Western Europe, bringing advantages to the whole community.
The joint event 2007 will take place in Prague and so continuing the very successful 2006 event.

The eGovernment take-up in Europe has brought a lot of new issues to solve, including specific technologies and approaches for better eGovernment services for business and governmental cooperation.

Thematic sessions will include issues like:

- Technologies for eGovernment and decision making
- Change Management for eGovernment
- eGovernment to eBusiness (SMEs eGovernment, G2B interoperability)
- Transfer of knowledge for eGovernment solutions
- Creating value from Public Sector Information
- ERP systems in governmental setings
- eGovernment in municipailities and regions
- Teaching and training eGovernment

Program schedule:

* April 11, 2006 - eGovernment project workshops
* April 12-13, 2006 - Eastern Europe e|Gov Days with exhibition