Electronic voting in Estonia

The idea of having electronic voting in Estonia gained popularity in 2001 with the "e-minded" coalition government. Estonia became the first nation to hold legally binding general elections over the Internet with their pilot project for the municipal elections in 2005. The electronic voting system withstood the test of reality and was declared a success by Estonian election officials.^[1] The Estonian parliamentary election in 2007 also used internet voting, another world first.^[2]

Internet voting

Although the term electronic voting (or e-voting) can refer to both fixed voting locations (as in voting booths) and remote (as in over the Internet) electronic voting, in Estonia the term is used exclusively for remote Internet voting. The security model is modeled after the way in which advance voting and postal voting is handled.^[3]

Overview of Estonian Internet voting

Criticism

Despite praise from Estonian election officials, computer security experts from outside the country that have reviewed the system have voiced criticism, warning that any voting system which transmits voted ballots electronically cannot be secure.^[9] This criticism was underscored in May 2014 when a team of International computer security experts released the results of their examination of the system, claiming they could be able to breach the system, change votes and vote totals, and erase any evidence of their actions if they could install malware on the election servers.^[10] The team called on the Estonian government to halt all online voting.

The Estonian National Electoral Committee reviewed the concerns and published a response saying that the claims "give us no reason to suspend online balloting"; the purported vulnerabilities were said to be either not feasible in reality or already accounted for in the design of the e-voting system.^[11] The Estonian Information System Authority also responded to the claims, describing them as a political, rather than technical, attack on the e-voting system, and criticising the method of disclosure.^[12] The connection of international researchers group to the Estonian Centre Party (which has long been critical of e-voting) has also been a common speculation among Estonian state officials and has been even suggested by prime minister.^[13]^[14]^[15]

The main author of a white paper for Estonian electronic voting from 2001, Helger Lipmaa^[16] has been critical of the system up to the level of using paper ballots himself.^[17] The main author of second white paper for Estonian electronic voting from 2001, Tanel Tammet^[18] has been campaigning for opening up the source code and implementing independent parallel systems to guarantee trust in the e-voting.^[19]^[20] Server side code was published with Creative Commons BY-NC-ND license on GitHub as result of those efforts in July 2013.^[21]

OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission has voiced concerns about Estonian e-voting during all parliament elections, starting from proposal to suspend e-voting if the problems are not addressed in 2007,^[22] then in 2011 suggesting election commission should create an inclusive working group for improving e-voting and implement cryptographic measures to ensure voting is observable^[23] and noting that verification implemented for 2015 only partially addresses previous recommendation.^[24]

In 2012 overview of international experience with e-voting, IFES independent researchers notice that although insofar successful, in situation of "emerging international electoral standards with respect to Internet voting" Estonian voting system faces necessary improvements for "better legislation, a transparent policy and formalized procedures" as well as "broader democratic goals, such as enhancing civic e-participation" need to be considered.^[25]

In 2013 Free Software Foundation Europe criticized partial publishing of the source code of e-voting system and for using non-software licenses for publication. FSFE also suggests researching into solutions that lessen reliance on system administrators and instead build the system on cryptographic models of trust. Since the weakest part of voting infrastructure is voter's computer, FSFE suggests Estonia should mitigate the risks of unnoticed subversion of votes in compromised client machines and "publicise the dangers as widely as possible, along with instructions to minimise the risk and rectify the situation should a risk realise".^[26]

There have been also attempts to expose problems of voting system by proofs of concept. In 2011 Paavo Pihelgas created a trojan that was theoretically able to change voter's choice without user noticing. He used this as basis for filing an election complaint and demanded that Supreme Court invalidates election results. The court dismissed the case because Pihelgas's "voter's rights had not been infringed as long as he had knowingly put himself into the situation".^[27]

In 2015 Märt Põder took credit for casting an invalid ballot "using a GNU debugger to locate the breakpoint in Linux IVCA where the candidate number is stored and replace it with an invalid candidate number".^[28] Being only one among 176 491 e-voters to do it, the activist explained to the media that client application source code should be opened up and taught as part of general education in public schools to make people trust e-voting.^[29] Later negotiating with electoral commission an activist went on to stress that end-to-end verifiability is a prerequisite for reliable e-voting and that the whole process of planning, procuring and implementing e-voting should be conducted also in English and that way opened up to international community for proper scrutiny.^[30]^[31]

History

2015 Elections

In the 2015 parliamentary elections, 176,491 people, 30.5% of all participants, voted over the Internet.^[32]

2014 Elections

In the European Parliament elections, 103,151 people voted over the Internet. This means that roughly 31.3% of participating voters gave their vote over the Internet.^[33]

2013 Elections

In the 2013 local municipal elections, 133,808 people voted over the Internet.^[34] This means that roughly 21.2% of participating voters gave their vote over the Internet.^[35] It was also the first election where vote verification with mobile device was implemented. ^[36]

2011 Elections

In the 2011 parliamentary elections, 140,846 people voted over the Internet.This means that roughly 15.4% of the persons with the right to vote and 24.3% of participating voters gave their vote over the Internet.^[37] It was also the first election to allow for voting through chip-secure mobile phones, following a law approved by Parliament in 2008.^[38]

2009 Elections

In the 2009 local municipal elections, 104,415 people voted over the Internet.^[39] This means that roughly 9.5% of the persons with the right to vote gave their vote over the Internet.^[40]

In the European Parliament elections, 58,669 people voted over the Internet. This means that roughly 14.7% of participating voters gave their vote over the Internet.^[41]

2007 Elections

In 2007 Estonia held its and the world's first general elections with Internet voting available from February 26 to 28. A total of 30,275 citizens used Internet voting (3.4%), which means for every 30 eligible voters one of them voted through the Internet.^[42]

2005 Elections

In 2005 Estonia became the first country to offer Internet voting nationally in local elections.^[43] 9,317 people voted online (1.9%).

Outcome and results

See the material on the homepage of the Estonian National Electoral Committee: http://www.vvk.ee/index.php?id=11509

Main statistics (source: "Internet Voting at the Elections of Local Government Councils on October 2005. Report." Table 11, p 27)

Number of persons with the right to vote: 1,059,292
Votes: 502,504
- valid (with e-votes) 496,336
- invalid 6,168
Voter turnout: 47%
E-votes given: 9,681
- incl. repeated e-votes 364
Number of e-voters: 9,317
E-votes counted: 9,287
E-votes cancelled: 30
Percentage of e-votes among all votes: 1.85%
Percentage of e-votes among votes of advance polls: 8%
Number of e-voters who used ID card electronically for the first time: 5,774
Percentage of e-voters who used ID card electronically for the first time: 61%