I received two contrasting emails today. The first was Geneva's Chancellerie d'Etat confirming that a citizen referendum has approved the permanent use of Internet voting with a 70% majority. The email goes on to report that other Swiss cantons are also looking at adopting the technology sigh.
But don't worry, Germany brings good news. Ulrich Wiesner and his dad took the law permitting voting machines to the constitutional court, and won. Ulrich presented his work on this at ORG's February 2007 e-voting workshop (PowerPoint slides) but the details on the court result aren't available online in English yet. Rop Gonggrijp (Dutch e-voting activist), summarised the result as:
Today the court ruled that the German “Bundeswahlgeraeteverordnung”,
the law that deals with voting machines, is unconstitutional and void.
Much more importantly, they gave German citizens the constitutional
right to see al phases of the voting process (in its entirety) happen
before their very eyes. They strongly rejected the notion that
'delegated trust' can ever be a replacement for trust that comes from
(the possibility of) direct observation or that observers can be
required to posess any kind of specialised technical knowledge.
Whilst the ruling is specific to the German constitution it's yet another country turning away from e-voting. What will it take for the British government to rule out e-voting for the foreseeable future?
The judgement in German: http://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/entscheidungen/cs20090303_2bvc000307.html
Very rough translation:
http://bit.ly/MISi
UPDATE: Official press release from the court, in English, thanks to Ulrich Wiesner for the pointer.
Jason Kitcat 