SEMINAR WORK: EELECTIONS AND EVOTING THE CASE OF SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE STUDENT NAME: Adrian Dulaj STUDENT NUMBER: 09 336 595 COURSE NAME: Masters in European Business DEPARTMENT: Department of SES COURSE CODE: OCEH8V1 SUPERVISOR: Luis Teran DATE OF SUBMISSION: 01 December 2011
This document is posted to help you gain knowledge. Please leave a comment to let me know what you think about it! Share it to your friends and learn new things together.
Transcript
SEMINAR WORK:
E-‐ELECTIONS AND E-‐VOTING -‐ THE CASE OF SWITZERLAND
AND FRANCE
STUDENT NAME: Adrian Dulaj STUDENT NUMBER: 09 336 595 COURSE NAME: Masters in European Business DEPARTMENT: Department of SES COURSE CODE: OCEH8V1 SUPERVISOR: Luis Teran DATE OF SUBMISSION: 01 December 2011
Voting at polling places: It provides the highest security compared to other
electronic forms because it happens physically, and the department can provide
the reliable, no virus, easy handled voting machines at places. Furthermore, the
voters are authenticated.
Voting at home via computer: means that individual can vote from their home,
however it’s hard to predict or prevent the other/third person from viewing or
12
taking part in voting process. As well, it is more difficult to secure the voter’s
computer from the attack of hackers or viruses.
Voting anyplace with mobile devices: The voters who vote through their laptop,
mobile, PDA or any other device, in any place that is convenient for the voter, but
that is connected to internet. The important issue in this group is that network
where voter get’s access to Internet. It is crucial to make sure that is not
monitored or hacked by any ‘’attackers”.
7. E-‐Voting in France and Switzerland
In this section, we will see how the real e-‐voting cases in Switzerland, United
States and in France, how did they adapt and the benefits, consequences and
remarks of the system.
7.1. E-‐Voting in France – Presidential Elections in 2007
Since introduced E-‐Voting in France has been met with a criticism and
opposition. This was proved that although with a record number of voters, there
was a strong opposition in Presidential Elections in 2007.
In France, electronic voting machines were first authorized in 2004 but they
were first used in general elections of 2007. First round had a record of voters -‐
37.6 million or 85% voter turnout. But, the remote Internet voting in France was
used years earlier. In 2003 French citizens living in U.S. were allowed to vote
and elect their representative to the Assembly of the French Citizens Abroad
(Conseil Supérieur des Français d’étranger (CSFE)). Actually, over 60% of the
electorate did choose to cast their vote over the Internet7.
So, after the E-‐Elections in 2003, the debate over the e voting and its future
began. A report published by “Forum des Droits sur l’Internet in 2003”8
recommended that this systems of voting (Remote Internet Voting) could be 7 http://www-‐cs-‐faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs181/projects/2006-‐07/electronic-‐voting/index_files/page0005.html 8 http://www.tiresias.org/research/guidelines/evoting_projects.htm
13
used only by French citizens abroad, whereas the electorate in France should
able to vote through polling place e-‐voting (i.e. DRE). Furthermore, the report
argued that this system offers:
• Increased opportunity for political participation
• Simplifies the voting process etc.
However, the debate in 2007 proved the opposite. Most of the political parties in
elections of 2007 where against using electronic voting for these reasons:
• Lack of Security
• The ease of use
• Cost of the machine
Despite many trials and projects, the first round of presidential elections had
many malfunctions, and for this reason in 2008 an online petition in
Ordinateurs-‐de-‐vote.org was lunched for voting in traditional way and in time
more than 80,000 signatures where collected. Still, since then, the France
government officials are working in Internet elections are are preparing to lunch
internet voting in near future9!
7.2. E-‐Voting in Switzerland
The Swiss E-‐Voting initiative was introduced in 2002 with creating of all
necessary legal basis and recommendation. In its “Report on the electronic vote,
opportunity, risks and feasibility” the Federal Council 10mentions that:
• E-‐Voting should be easy, practical and safe as possible
• It should under no circumstances penalize citizens who have no access to
electronic method
• The technical infrastructure should be reliable
• The system should allow verifying votes
• The system should help prevent abuse, count all votes and of course
The original idea was to give a wide platform in order to cast votes
in referendum and elections and also to give an electronic signature for
initiatives, referendum and candidate proposals. For the moment all pilot
project are only concerned on voting in referendum and elections.
The Switzerland’s objective of E-Voting is not to replace the actual ballot
or postal voting, but to serve as an additional channel which might increase
voter’s turnout that become lower and lower since decades (Figure 2), with
the exception on singular critical vote (for example entry in the EU).
Figure 2: Voter turnout 1919-2007
With the introduction of postal voting in the 90ies the Swiss government
tried to reverse the voting behavior giving a new method that make voting
more easily accessible. And also very important the concept of distant-
polling has been introduced so that E-Voting will not appear as an absolute
revolution.
The main categories of people that could be interested on this project
are young people that are more interested in the use of Internet but with
a below-average participation and also all people that are not able too cast
their vote for different physical reason, for example physically handicapped
individuals or the community of Swiss expatriates.
This last community represented by OSA2 demanded the possibility to
be able to cast their vote electronically for the 2011 federal election at the
lasts. The number of Swiss voters abroad is significant, in 2006 there were
approximately 650 thousand Swiss residents abroad and 111 thousand of
2Organisation of the Swiss Abroad
5
15
The idea was to create an accessible system that does not oblige voters to
purchase any infrastructure beyond PC and Internet access. Voters who wished
to vote online where not required pre-‐registering with the state first because it
discourages them. The Geneva University was chosen to conduct legal and social
political studies. As well, after the social issues, one should focus in technical
issues.
In Geneva, many it companies were mandated to develop aspects of the
application, and audit its security. A website was created to inform citizens and
provide them a contact with voting platform – www.ge.ch/evoting. Ergonomic
test helped to define the user interface.
Figure 6. – Demo of Internet Voting in Geneva
The Geneva parliament was also involved in the procedure in order to give a
hand to the improvement of the system. Moreover cantonal and federal
16
lawmakers have developed a set of rules specific of Internet voting. Some of
them are mentioned below:
1. Visually impaired voters should be able to vote online
2. The electronic voting application must be clearly separated from the
state’s other IT applications.
3. Systematic fraud, systematic vote hijacking on the internet and systematic
identity theft shall be impossible
4. Voters should be provided a way to ensure that they are voting on the
State’s official website and should be informed that their ballot has been
properly cast and stored in the electronic ballot box
5. Stored votes should be totally anonymous… etc
The development of this system of Internet voting in Geneva has relied as much
as possible in the Recommendation Act (2004) mentioned above by the Council
of Europe! So, as we can see, many parties are need to be involved in the
procedure in order to have a reliable voting system.
Open Source of the Internet voting
The open source of the system is an delicate issues of the e-‐voting in general. It
can be seen as a barrier of this system if the source code is not provided or very
partly provided for the public or other institution to understand and valuate it.
But in Geneva it is different. Geneva always had an opinion that state must own
the intellectual property of its internet voting system. So this means that either
that state uses software whose source are public –open source or it acquires the
intellectual the source. For now, more then 80% of the software in Geneva is an
open source, and the rest is own by the state. Moreover Geneva law opens the
code for any interest, review or scientific research to citizens, experts etc.
The security approach in Geneva
The key issue of security for Geneva officials is the securing the data. They
propose that three parties must be taken into account:
-‐ The voter’s PC
17
-‐ The Internet
-‐ The State’s IT System.
The Geneva team instead of focusing to them as a three different entities, they
focus on the common factor of all three: The data
First, the voter’s PC – this is the weakest part of the system with regard to the
security issues. The risks are managed by sending a signed java applet to the
voter’s PC but without installing it there. All through voting session this applet
protects PC from the malicious software that could attack the PC. Secondly, on
the Internet the data here is protected by java applet encryption, which is
generated by quantum generator. Last, but not least the state’s IT system is a
very complex system, which after all, filters all requests and commands so that
only ones who are compatible with a voting procedures are processed.
The ID Card – In Geneva, before every voting, voters receive by post a voting card
(single use), which is their numerical ID. This card as well carrier voters number
and a PIN code. In order to vote the individual has to give to the system two
shared secrets: birthdate and a municipality of origin, as well as the PIN Code. So
far, the system has shown success.
Figure 7. The ID card used for Internet voting in Geneva (with PIC code hidden in the down-‐left
side)
2322
THE ID ISSUE
Dealing with ID management on the internet raises a fundamental question: how do I know that you really are who you say you are ?In the physical world, this answer is easily provided. A passport, an ID card or a driver’s license settle the question. To obtain an ID from the state, one has to come in person and provide a pre-existing
of one’s birth. At that moment, let’s call it “time zero”, our parents created our identity and the state gave it a material existence.
In the cyberworld, there can be as many “time zeros” as one de-cides ; everyone can assume as many names, genders and ages as they wish. Therefore, the central question becomes : is it acceptable to fully dematerialize the digital ID ?
the extensive checks performed in the physical world to ascertain
the browser, which can be compromised.
This does not mean that online authentication has to be complex. Before every ballot, Geneva voters receive by post a single use voting card, which is their numerical ID with time-limited validity. This card carries the voter’s number and PIN code. To validate their votes, citizens must also give the system two shared secrets: their birth date and municipality of origin. This is a implementation of the strong online authentication rule that relies on the combination of two out of the three following items: something you know ( in this case, your birth date and municipality of origin ), something you have ( your voting card with PIN code ) and something you are ( which
18
8. Conclusion
In this seminar work, I have presented detailed and understandable the subject
of the e voting in general. We have been introduced to types of e-‐voting,
advantages and disadvantages and focused in the real cases as well. All though,
there are different types of e-‐voting, i.e. DRE systems or Internet voting, still the
results in the end are things that matters. In most of the cases, the results are
positive, however a further improvements need to be done. Even though, some
countries have different opinions/preference on which e-‐voting type to choose,
still each one of them has their benefits. I recall the case of DRE in Brazil, which is
very used and serves like a model these days for other countries, and in
Switzerland they are not practiced; in opposite Swiss are known for their
Internet voting experiences, i.e. in Geneva. In my opinion, after all what has been
mentioned above, what needs to be done for other governments that want to
use any types of the e-‐voting is that they should:
• Make public research which way of e-‐voting would be more convenient
for the citizens
• Understand their financial and IT capacities
• When chosen, take a supervision from countries/cities which are pioneer
in any way of e-‐voting (i.e. Geneva)
• Try to rely as mush as possible on the Recommendations Report (2004)
of the European Council etc.
19
Appendix – The system architecture of the Geneva Internet Voting
Source: http://www.ge.ch/evoting
20
Sources:
Prof.Dr. Dimitris Gritzalis, 2002 [Secure Electronic Voting: New Trends, New
Threats]. Available on: http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-‐
Tiresias, 2011 [Countries with E-‐Voting Projects]; available on: 1 http://www.tiresias.org/research/guidelines/evoting_projects.htm, accessed on: 06.Nov.2011 State Council Report of the Republic and Canton of Geneva, July 2007 [Electronic Voting]; available on: http://www.ge.ch/evoting/english/doc/rapports/EN_RD_639_and_Annex.pdf; accessed on: 23.Nov.2011 Jan Gerlach, Urs Gasser 2009 [Three case studies from Switzerland: E-‐Voting]; available on: 1 http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Gerlach-‐Gasser_SwissCases_Evoting.pdf; accessed on: 20.Nov.2011 Republic and Canton of Geneva [The Geneva Internet Voting System]; available on: http://www.ge.ch/evoting/english/doc/passport_evoting2010.pdf, accessed on: 05.Nov.2011