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Elections go electronic

Estonia premiers the world's first Internet voting for parliamentary elections

On Sunday 4 March, Estonia played host to a grand experiment: Internet voting for parliament.

read more here

Posted by Katharine Sanderson on March 5, 2007 05:27 PM |

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Dear Kathrine,
I'm glad that you have brought to the notice of Nature readers about this interesting happening in Estonia. I was aware about India being the first and largest democracy in the world to use electronic voting machines (not connected to internet) but this happening in Estonia is awesome.
Thanx
Amit

Posted by: Amit | March 5, 2007 06:28 PM

This would a very bad system for the US. It would present way too many avenues for fraud. We already have too much electronic equipment in our elections -- and all are corruptible. (In fact, there is a huge amount of data that the mainstream media will not print or broadcast, about electronic fraud and election theft in the past several elections.)

In addition, with internet voting, one's vote can be bought, sold, changed unbeknownst to the voter, and even "seen" by others who have access to the system.

This system may work for Estonina, but in our US electoral culture, internet voting would be much too vulnerable to methods of election theft.

-- STC

Posted by: STC | March 5, 2007 11:04 PM

Online voting is about the most insecure form of voting that there is, due to computer hacking. The next most insecure form is touchscreen (DRE) voting. With the touchscreen voting, election activists have recommended a paper trail, which is inadequate, but provides a modicum of checks and balances. Why does a paper trail help even a little? Because it is a visible, physical record that can be counted with a human's eyes. Electronic votes are invisible ballots. Who is checking to see if they actually represent the will of the voter or if they are thrown out or switched to favor another candidate? A nation that allows electronic or computer voting is taking a serious step away from democracy. Money is stolen from bank transactions online every day, despite the use of passwords and security codes. At least the bank or individual may miss their money and start an investigation. But who knows if their vote was even counted or not? The use of personal ID cards also gives pause for thought. How much info do we want to give the government? Why would not the gov't mine this info and how people vote for their own use?

Posted by: MJ Creech | March 6, 2007 05:39 AM

electronic voting could be useful, but voters should be made to complete a quick IQ test, and their subsequent vote weighted by their IQ. this would ensure that the winner will be someone who is considered by intelligent people to be the best person to govern the country, and avoid a repeat of the embarrassing situation of our country being run by an idiot like george bush who won by appealing to simple-minded country hicks who quite frankly are not sophisicated enough to appreciate the complexities of politics, and who are won over by meaningless slogans and cynical publicity stunts.

Posted by: republicans4change | March 7, 2007 07:36 PM

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