E-voting in the 2005 local elections in Estonia and the broader impact for future e-voting projects

ABSTRACT

In this project, we analyze the introduction of voting by internet (e-voting) in political elections. In particular, we focus on the Estonian municipal elections held on 16 October 2005, where the possibility of casting a vote via the internet was newly introduced. This introduction of e-voting represented a true world-première: even though internet voting has so far been used in consultative decision making processes around the globe, in private elections and in a number of formally binding referendums, the local elections in Estonia were the first time that an electorate of an entire country could cast its vote over the Internet in a public election. On behalf of the Council of Europe, and in close collaboration with the Estonian authorities, our research team academically accompanied this landmark event in e-democracy. Completing the process-tracing of the internet voting implementation, we conducted a survey among over 900 citizens, allowing us to conduct an in-depth study on voting behaviour in e-elections. Our research shows what voting channels have been used by what type of citizes and contains a fine-grained analysis of participation patterns and political behaviour of the citizens in these elections. Finally, the data and findings of our research allows us to make a selective comparisons with other studies in the field of e-democracy, which we conducted in several elections and referendums in Switzerland.

REFERENCES

• 1: Gritzalis, Dimitirs. Secure Electronic Voting (Advances in Information Security), Kluwer, 2003.
• 2: Trechsel, Alexander and Mendez, Fernando. The European Union and e-voting: addressing the European Parliament's internet voting challenge, Routledge, 2005.
• 3: Techsel, Alexander H./Kies, Raphael/Mendez, Fernando/Schmitter, Phillipee C. Evaluation of the use of new technologies in order to facilitate democracy in Europe. E-democratizing the parliaments and parties of Europe. Report for the European Parliament Scientific and Technological Options Assessment Series (STOA Report), 2004.
• 4: The homepages of the E-Democracy Center and the e-Governance Academy are at: http://edc.unige.ch/ and http://www.ega.ee/
• 5: Information on e-voting in Estonia is on the official homepage of the Estonian National Electoral Committee at: http://www.vvk.ee/engindex.html and http://www.vvk.ee/elektr/docs/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf
• 6: For the activities of the Council of Europe in the project "Good Governance in the Information Society" see http://www.coe.int/t/e/integrated_projects/democracy/02_Activities/.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  J. Computer Applications
  J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING

General Terms:
Documentation, Human Factors, Theory

Keywords:
e-democracy, e-voting, elections, participation, voting channels