Review: Enquete about E-Voting at planned student elections

On Wednesday 3rd December from 9 am to 5 pm an enquete was held in “Palais Harrach” in Vienna. It’s topic was “A Chance for Political Participation through New Media”. The enquete was organized by the Austrian Ministry for Science and Research (BMWF), which initiated a project this year to open an E-Voting channel for students who cannot attend the student union elections physically.
These elections are scheduled for May 2009. The aim of this “one-day-conference” was to provide a platform for discussion between Austrian and international stakeholders.

This goal was truly achieved as the discussion was intense and also quite controversial. Representatives of the student union and also private persons criticized amongst others that E-Voting would open new ways for manipulation and possible electoral fraud. Some have also questioned whether the voting principles of the free and secret vote could be assured using E-Voting. There also were voices, for example Heinz Mayer’s, who is Professor for administrative law, who stated that postal voting would pose similar questions. In his opinion the step towards postal voting has been the wrong signal.

On the contrary there were experts who spoke in favour of an electronic voting channel for this election. Minister Hahn, who called the conference, said it is necessary to innovate voting, facing a globalized future. Pippa Norris, from Harvard University, found evidence in her latest research that the rate of media usage and the rate of openness to new cultures are strongly connected. Peter Filzmaier, a renowned Austrian political scientist, outlined the differing views of proponents and opponents and stated that an additional electronic voting channel would, in his opinion, account for our global societies’ needs for more mobility.

Robert Krimmer from E-Voting.CC gave an overview about the E-Voting project and explained its planned outline: The Internet voting channel will be available during the week before the paper voting. Authentication shall be established via a signature card - The BMWF sponsors 10.000 card readers for students who activate the citizens card function on their “e-card”, which is a card used in healthcare. There shall be no re-votation possibility and once a voter has decided to vote electronically, the paper vote is prohibited, but of course everybody has the free choice to use whatever channel.
The project is in an advanced planning phase, the implementation will commence at the beginning of the year. The slides of the presentation are available here.

There also were several other experts of great interdisciplinary scope who contributed to this enquete, for details please visit the link to the enquete above.
In the afternoon there were three workshops dealing with the topics:

• “Citizens card as key for participation”
• “Technical solutions for E-Voting” and
• “Juridical aspects of E-Democracy”

In a wrap up session the conclusions of these workshops were drawn, although the most controversial was the third one dealing with E-Democracy, which has been drafted above.

All in all it was an interesting enquete which contributed to the Austrian discussion about the topic.
Daniel Botz, E-Voting.CC

Tags: Austria, conference, e-voting