E-Voting: International Developments and Lessons Learnt.
Thomas M. Buchsbaum · 2004
Countries worldwide are carrying growing interest in e-voting. The paper gives a brief overview on recent developments. The countries are joined in their interest by industry and international organisations. All three groups of actors and individual actors within each group have different and sometimes diverging reasons for their interest, and thus different goals. The paper focuses on remote / i[nternet]-voting. Member states of the Council of Europe (CoE) are in their final phase of standard-setting on e-voting. The paper provides a preview on a possible CoE recommendation. As the number of e-voting tests is growing, so are the lessons learnt. The paper contains a list of suggestions on ways how best to introduce (remote) e-voting. 1 Growing attention to e-voting E-Voting has been attracting considerable attention during the last years. This fact is based on the one hand upon interest and attention devoted to e-government, edemocracy, e-governance, etc. On the other hand, interest in e-voting is founded in problems with domestic election systems, e.g. lacking flexibility with respect to timeframes and physical accessibility of polling stations, which progressively prevent citizens to cast their vote at these places. Interest in e-voting exists in various quarters: government, parliaments, electorate, academia and industry with each having sometimes conflicting interests. They can differ with respect, e.g., to speed, individual leadership, safety, user friendliness, etc. 1 Thomas M. BUCHSBAUM, Dr.iur. (Vienna), MPhil (Cantab.), an Austrian career diplomat, is currently head of division (expatriates as well as property, social and labour issues) at the Austrian Federal Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The opinions expressed in this paper reflect his personal views.