Austrian E-Voting system ante portas

The Austrian student union elections of May 2009 are planned to be the first binding elections to be held via an electronic voting channel in Austria. After the E-Voting tests for these student elections in 2003 and for the presidential elections of 2004, the upcoming elections will have binding character.

Back in 2000 the student union, represented by Martin Faißt at that time, requested a channel for distance voting from the minister in charge. On February 1st the law has been changed accordingly after a parliamentary decision. Due to the fact that the citizens cards were non existent at that time, a scientific group has been founded in order to prepare E-Voting test elections, which were held in 2003 and 2004 as mentioned above.

Now an E-Voting channel will be realized during the election which are scheduled for May 2009. Students who reside abroad or have to work in other regions of Austria will have the opportunity to vote via this online channel. According to the student union act a working group was founded which is lead by the Ministry of Science. The system will be programmed by the Spanish election software specialist Scytl, it will be hosted by the Austrian Federal Computing Centre (BRZ). The electronic internet voting channel will be opened one week before the paper election period in order to minimize the risk of failure on a single day.

Authentication will be established through the citizen card. The ministry has started the campaign Studi.gv.at in order to issue 10.000 free card readers for students who activate their citizens card function, which is located on the E-Card, which is used for healthcare administration.
The system shows the ballots after authentication and the voter can vote for his preference. The vote is encrypted and then digitally signed using the citizen card. The votes are securely stored in the Austrian Federal Computing Centre. After the paper voting process the electoral commission will start the counting process. Using two keys held by two different members of the electoral commission, the signatures will be removed, the votes will be mixed and then counted.

At present this cutting edge project is thoroughly discussed by interested students and the media in a controversial and sometimes a bit emotional manner. The project will be a valuable reference for the future development of voting in Austria and it may well open the path for E-Voting on a federal level. But this time has still to come….

Daniel Botz - E-Voting.CC

Tags: e-voting, electronic, i-voting, voting