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EESTI ELU reedel, 17. jaanuaril 2020 — Friday, January 17, 2020
Interview: How e-voting works in Estonia but what are the methods that Robert can tell us about, from Estonia held two elections in his international experience? 2019, with the general election “So, there are three stages – on March 3, and the Euro identifying a voter, casting the pean elections following on vote, and counting the vote. The May 26. In both cases, voters simplest way to do the latter had a range of options on how would be optical scanning, and when to vote. The most where voters have already es celebrated of these is un tablished their ID and cast their doubtedly e-voting, which is vote on paper. These are then open in advance of polling scanned by optical scanners, day itself (in the case of the and counted that way. If any European elections, from May thing breaks down, they can 16 to 22). still revert to the human eye if Professor Robert Krimmer of needed.” the Ragnar Nurkse Department “The second-most complex of Innovation and Governance, method is voting machines. at Tallinn University of Techno These do both casting and logy, now known internationally counting, and are basically as Taltech, was able to provide large machines which look like, an overview both for here, in and are even based on, lottery Estonia, and internationally. or gambling machines. While Is it true you can cancel your they are anonymous, they are e-vote at a polling station at any also limited in some ways. For time during the electoral pro cess, and second, should we instance, breaking up sequences refer to electronic voting as of votes – with the old fashioned e-voting, or i-voting, as it is manual counting, ballot boxes would be given a good shake sometimes called. “Either is fine, but it depends before human counters started their work, to break up se on the context,” Robert says. “e-voting essentially just quences, which can in fact lead means there is a form of IT, and to inaccuracies.” “The other problem with an election, and that’s it. It’s a machines is the cost – the generic term which can be used machines are hugely expensive, internationally.” need to be stored and main Ironing out a common tained, and are only used once a misconception year, often less than that. For Can you cast an e-vote, in some countries, the costs are Estonia, and later override it just too high. Even in the U.S., at the polling station? they bought some machines, “Yes you can, but not al which cost around three billion ways. There is a large array of dollars but which were, quite options for voting, including on frankly, substandard.” board ship or at a foreign mis “In Ireland, where they use sion, followed by the advance the Single Transferable Vote voting period proper, which (STV) system, the machines allows people to vote online were seen to sort of take away and at polling stations, includ from the ‘fun’ of the week-long ing both county centers, and at period it took to count votes, shopping malls and other places with candidates being elimi with a high through-flow of nated one-by-one, a bit like on people. If you vote online during X Factor or those types of this advance period, you can shows.” then go to a polling station and The STV proportional repre override that vote while the advance period lasts, but you sentation (PR) system, also used in the UK, requires voters can’t do it on the election day.” “In general, with the prin to rank candidates in order of ciples of sharing data, and the preference. Estonia uses the X-road system of e-governance, d’Hondt method of PR in all its a key concept is that you should elections. “The Estonian e-voting sys not do things twice. In Europe as a whole, maintaining ad tem is the most complex, since dresses is one way for people to it does all three stages, ID, vote make money, as people move casting, and counting. So secrecy around. If you don’t know is paramount. People can cast where people are living, it can as many e-votes as they want, become a problem, including which is one way of avoiding for governments. A lot of time coercion or other methods of and money is spent on cleaning influence,” (since a person who these things up. So it makes cast an e-vote under pressure – sense to have one, secure, re- for instance if an acquaintance usable source of information, is looking over their shoulder at not only on addresses, but the the time and commenting on same with health records, edu their choice – can later go back and change it). cational qualifications etc. As he obviously has a back “However, although you can ground in e-governance, perhaps vote as many times as you it’s no surprise that Robert, who want, eventually there would be is from Austria, came to live some cut-off, where they and work in Estonia. authorities might come and I was working in Poland, investigate. This happened in when I got the opportunity to 2011, when a person cast their come to Tallinn, in 2014, so my vote something like 500 times. wife and I decided to move They probably had some other even further north right then. intention, such as testing the But what is e-voting? system as they were interested We’ve established the term in developing their own soft and its popularity in Estonia, ware for some other purpose,
Andrew Whyte, ERR
but nonetheless the police fol lowed it up.” “The numbers who cancel their e-vote to vote at the ballot box are quite small, however. At the general election in March, there were about 120 of them (from 252,000 e-votes cast).” There is of course, some interface with the private sec tor, in e-voting, even if we’re just talking about the ISP which connects a person so they can vote online. Pre sumably the fewer companies involved, the better? “This is where the Estonian ID card comes in. There’s just one company which acts as the trust center here at the moment, but there is no reason why there couldn’t be more in the future, other than it tends not to be a functioning market. In Germany, there is more than one company involved doing these things, however.” Even if multiple votes are possible, within reason, is there not a danger that the system can be open to error, if not even fraud – historically a criticism made by both the Centre Party and EKRE, in Estonia? “This is where the ‘dark period’ between advance voting and election day comes in. Over those three days, the Electoral Commission sees who has voted online, and transfers this information to the home polling station (so they cannot vote on election day-ed.) or to the ad vance voting polling stations. This period collates things, to ensure noone votes twice or more. There is one central point in Tallinn where the votes are collected and collated. This in formation then goes to the cen tral election committee, who have all the information by the Saturday, the day before elec tion day. And this goes for all three levels of elections – municipal, national, and Euro pean”. So the advance voting period has both set the stage for e-voting, and maintained its popularity (since you can’t vote online on election day). But what about demographics? Another criticism is that e-voting is easier for younger, more tech-savvy people. Older people still have other methods (including an option to vote at home, on election day, by prior arrangement – which necessitates a phone call just a couple of hours in advance), but some parties, notably Reform, tend to do better out of e-voting in any case. Does it not skew things, then? “Funnily enough, with the municipal elections, when the voting age was lowered to 16, around 80 percent of the young est voter group chose to vote on paper – simply because they enjoyed the experience and wanted to be rewarded for being politically active.” “Holding online votes on election day would be vul nerable to outages of the sys
tem, that is another reason for the advance period and three ‘dark days’. In 2011, for in stance, a student programmed a trojan horse program which could lock the voting screen and change how a voter had voted. This is not an issue now, though – you can even check via the system, including on your phone, your cast vote and what is recorded.” “The two most important factors, guaranteeing security and guaranteeing function, are on-point here. The Estonian ID cards are state-of-the-art when it comes to self-authentication. I don’t know of any other coun try which has such a diffused, widespread system that is used everywhere. Yes, there are other countries with ID cards and other systems – Denmark uses a one-time password system, for instance – but these are not as ubiquitous as the Estonian ID card, which practically every one has, including non-citizens resident here.” A tweet by former presi dent Toomas Hendrik Ilves, a champion of e-voting, on elec tion night in March stated that the e-vote results ought to be available just after 8 p.m., when the polls closed. Was this a fair criticism? “Well having observed the process where those results are announced four times, I can tell you that there are some strict procedures to go through. Start ing around 7 p.m., at the Riigi kogu, everyone in attendance, some 100 people, has to sur render their mobile phones for the duration. There’s a 15-20 minute decrypting process to go through, and some administra tive procedures including burn ing the results on to a CD, be fore they can be announced. The e-vote is legally binding, not an exit poll. Even the people in the room only saw the fact of it, and the numbers, not the result, until it was published to all. But we got them up around half an hour after polls
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closed, which is pretty good going.” “You also have to compare that with the people having to do the manual count, who will have been at the polling station since early in the morning (polls open at 9:00 a.m. on election day-ed.), then only start the counting at 8:00 p.m.. At least there’s no smoking al lowed at polling stations, as there can be in some countries!” Future developments “The unique thing about Estonia is that people managed to agree on a system quickly, everyone uses it, and it works quite efficiently. There’s also the issue of building up a coun try, since independence, rather than trying to reform something that was already there. They made their own system, too, rather than buying a proprieto rial one, and had the right feel ing for the right tech, at the right time.” “Since 2007, Estonia has been in the forefront of protect ing its internet, with a crisis emergency response team with in the Information System Authority (the RIA), and there is a heightened awareness around election time too,” Robert says, of Estonia’s ap proach to e-voting security. But what are the likely developments in the future? “I think the trend away from voting machines, towards opti cal scanners, will continue. With machines, people struggle to understand what goes on inside them – this has been satirized on shows like the Simpsons, where the machines were depicted as eating the votes and so on.” “At the end of the day, all of these channels – all the e-voting methods, voting in person, by post, etc. simply make the process easier, make the partici pation in the celebration of de mocracy wider. But it’s only the candidates and their parties who really make people participate in elections.”
Preparing ‘verivorsts’ was a team event requiring volunteers from the Lutheran congregation, choir, Estonian school and others. Location, with a sizeable kitchen: the home of Lia and Erik Hess. Ingredients: barley, various supplements and condiments, pig gut and blood. From the left: Lia Hess, Leena Jaanimägi, Häli Puust, Merike Koger, Lillian Saar, and hidden, Evy Beraldo. Photo: Leila Hess
