The other competitors have fallen by the wayside leaving Estonia to take the medal when they cross the finishing line with their March 4th elections. These elections will be the world’s first national parliamentary elections conducted with an Internet voting channel. Their rush to implement this technology is driven by a desire to create positive press around the technological advancement of Estonia to attract inward investment. I can see no other reason expressed in the reports to justify this rapid introduction.
My previous analysis of the Estonian system showed that it wasn’t too bad and they’d been admirably open compared to other countries implementing e-voting. Nevertheless there are weaknesses in the system which could be manipulated by insiders and voters can’t be sure their votes are stored and counted as intended.
The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) will be sending a mission to observe the Estonian elections but do “…not intend to carry out a systematic or comprehensive observation of the voting, counting and tabulation on election day.” Of course observing a computer in a server room isn’t go to do much good anyway. I wonder what the Estonian candidates think?
CNET News.com report
Monsters & Critics report
Jason Kitcat 