E-voting

I am opposed to the introduction of e-voting into public elections, I am also extremely concerned by e-counting and postal voting. My research on e-voting dates back to 1999, here’s what I’ve written over the years. Also take a look at past blog entries on e-voting

• Estonia: May 2014 Report into Estonia’s e-voting system
  Report, video and much more from the independent team I was part of that researched and observed Estonia’s e-voting system.
• UK: May 2007 Election Report [PDF]
  Findings of the Open Rights Group Election Observation Mission in Scotland and England. Lead author, for the Open Rights Group.
• Electronic Voting: A Challenge to Democracy? – Briefing Paper [PDF]
  A comprehensive briefing of the issues regarding e-voting and e-counting in the UK as the stood in January 2007. Lead author, for the Open Rights Group.
• LEARN: I want to understand the issues
  A detailed, non-technical overview of the arguments for and against e-voting produced 2003-4.

Academic Journal Articles

• Security Analysis of the Estonian Internet Voting System (2014) – with J. Alex Halderman, Harri Hursti, Margaret MacAlpine, Travis Finkenauer, Drew Springall. Proceedings of the 21st ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’14), November 2014.
• Observing the English and Scottish 2007 e-elections (2008) – with Ian Brown
  Paper published in the Hansard Society’s journal Parliamentary Affairs on our experiences observing e-elections. PDF version for those who need it is here.
• Source availability and e-voting: an advocate recants (2004)
  Paper published in a special e-voting issue of Communications of the ACM examining source availability and e-voting. If you don’t have access to the ACM Digital Library, the full text version is on this site
• Government and ICT Standards: An Electronic Voting Case Study [PDF] (2004)Paper published in the journal Information, Communication & Ethics in Society examining attempts to standardise e-voting systems and the role government played in these attempts.

Magazine Articles

• We have the responsibility to stop e-voting
  A short column for the British Computer Society on why computer professionals should call a stop to electronic voting.
• US elections 2004: How did the technology do? [PDF] [LinuxUser] (2004)
  A fairly short report on e-voting in the US elections.
• Free elections …a change of heart? [PDF] [LinuxUser] (2003)Is the government playing fast and loose with e-voting pilots?
• Furthur down the road… why voting shouldn’t be electronic [PDF] [LinuxUser] (2003)
• A Free Software Odyssey [LinuxUser]
  The history of GNU.FREE, the ups and downs of developing Internet Voting software and why we ceased development.
• Standard Deviation [PDF] [LinuxUser]Technology standards for UK government software are vulnerable to the ‘extend and enhance’ policies of suppliers. Illustrated with the example of e-voting and Free Software.
• Electronic Voting Doesn’t Work [BallotBox/Electoral Reform Society] (2003)
  An introductory article exploring the problems with e-voting within the context of the evaluation of the 2003 electoral pilots.
• What’s the point of e-voting? [e-government bulletin] (2003)
  Following the 2003 pilots why are people still using turnout as an argument for e-voting. With some very simple figures I show how turnout, on average, declined for the e-voting pilots.
• Indistinguishable from magic? [egov monitor] (2003)
  A report on the Oxford Union e-voting debate, a recording of which you can listen to here
• Click…um…about here to vote… [on Usabilitynews.com] (2003)
  An article exploring some of the usability problems associated with e-voting which can not just make voting hard but actually affect the result.

Response & Analysis

• The uncertain nature of elections to come [PDF] (2003)
  Response and analysis to the Electoral Commission’s evaluation of the 2003 electoral pilot schemes and the Government’s own response to the
  evaluation.
• Turnout at the 2003 pilots (2003)A brief analysis and reproduction of turnout statistics (from the Election Commission) of the 2003 e-voting pilots.
• OII/OU e-voting debate (2003)
  Listen to the Oxford Internet Institute/Oxford Union debate on “This house has confidence in voting via the Internet” hosted on 23rd June 2003.
• Oracle’s specious arguments for e-voting (2003)
  Read a column by an Oracle executive and our response to their bizarre arguments as well as Richard Stallman’s comments.
• Why Electronic Voting Software Should be Free Software (2001)
• free-project.org news items
  All the news items, links and comments from the free-project.org’s homepage are archived here.

Observing E-Voting

• Handbook: Observing e-voting and e-counting [PDF] (2007)
  Lead author, for the Open Rights Group May 2007 election observation.

Consultation Responses

• Submission to the Irish Commission on Electronic Voting (2004)
  Download in [ PDF format ]
• Response to the Government’s consultation on having an e-voting pilot for the 2004 European elections (2003)Download in [ PDF format ]
• Main Response to UK e-democracy consultation.
  Download in [ PDF format ]
• Additional response to UK e-democracy consultation, electronic voting security report [PDF].Download in [ PDF format ]

See also my e-voting links page, more recent links tend to be in the e-voting blog archive.