Diapositiva 1

1
European online voting experiences Andreu
Riera, PhD Chairman Scytl Online World Security
S.A. DIMACS Voting Workshop Rutgers
University 26-27 May 2004
2
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

3
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

4
The origin of Scytl
1994
2001
2002
2004
2003

• 1994 The academic research on e-voting
  cryptography was initiated at the Universitat
  Autònoma de Barcelona, with the main goal to
  balance security and practical feasibility
• 1996 Completion of the PhD Thesis Design and
  Development of a Cryptographic Scheme to Perform
  Secure Elections over a LAN
• 1997 First Internet binding election in Europe
  (Presidency of the IEEE IT Spanish Chapter)
• 1999 Completion of the PhD Thesis Design of
  Implementable Solutions for Large Scale
  Electronic Voting Schemes
• 2001 Scytl Online World Security is spun-off
  from the research lab
• 2001 - 2003 The company receives support and
  acknowledgement from the Spanish Ministry of
  Science and Technology, the Catalan Government,
  the European Commission,

Scytls research team account for more than 20
international scientific publications on e-voting
security
5
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

6
Internet voting security
Auditing
7
Whats Pnyx?

• Pnyx is a patent-pending (priority date December
  2001) security software for e-voting systems
• Pnyx implements a mixing-based application-level
  cryptographic protocol, in which the mix-net has
  been substituted by a cryptographic secret
  sharing scheme

• The main goal of Pnyx is to tunnel the vote
  casting procedure from the voter all the way to
  the members of the electoral board through all
  the technical systems and privileged personnel
  sitting in between (therefore addressing the
  black box issue)
• Pnyx supports different voter authentication
  mechanisms, but in any case it assumes an
  underlying PKI for the electoral roll
• Pnyx provides individual verifiability by voters,
  and auditability by third parties

• Next version of Pnyx addresses the virus
  problem in the client device (as denounced for
  example in the SERVE Security Report)

8
Pnyx protocol overview
9
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

10
European approach to Internet voting

• The European Commission is working towards the
  implementation of Internet voting at the European
  level
• The Council of Europe is drafting a set of
  recommendations that will be issued to all Member
  States
• Some countries are actively testing Internet
  voting and/or have defined a complete roadmap to
  deploy Internet voting
• Some countries have run Internet voting
  experiences and are in the phase of defining an
  strategy to deploy Internet voting
• In general Internet voting is seen as a way
• to modernize electoral processes
• to try to increase voter turnout, and
• to engage citizens in participatory activities

11
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

12
Canton of Neuchâtel

• The perfect example of participatory democracy
• 500 people out of almost 200.000 citizens can
  request a referendum
• 6/8 binding elections/referenda per year
• 90 of people vote by mail (the voting period
  lasts approximately one month one single day in
  the case of poll-site voting)
• Internet voting system fully integrated into the
  Cantons e-government portal (Guichet Unique
  Sécurisé)
• One of the very few permanent and binding
  Internet voting systems in the World
• The project initiated in 2003 as a pilot Canton
  for the Swiss Federal Government, with the aim of
  complementing/substituing postal voting

• 20.000 electors in the first phase, who have to
  collect their voting credentials at their City
  Hall

13
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

14
Generalitat de Catalunya (1)

• First Internet voting experience in Spain run in
  parallel to actual public elections
• Approved (for the first time) by the Central
  Electoral Commission
• 23.234 citizens were allowed to participate from
  Argentina, Belgium, Chile, USA and Mexico (CERA
  electoral roll)
• Voting allowed during three days
• Opening 1000 November 14th 2003
• Closing 2000 November 16th 2003

• Voting kiosks were installed at several Casals
  Catalans, but also any computer connected to the
  Internet could be used to cast a vote
• The process was done in front of more than 20
  national and international observers, along with
  several representatives from the Spanish Senate

15
Generalitat de Catalunya (2)

• The electorate was totally satisfied with the
  experience and demanded the introduction of
  binding Internet voting
• In the USA almost 40 participation rate on real
  voter participation
• In Mexico more than 220 of participation rate
  on real voter participation
• 563 surveys were filled by voters, with 216
  free-text comments
• 97 expressed satisfaction with the experience
• 96 felt confident with the e-voting system
• 98 considered the e-voting process as easy to
  use
• 98 said they would had used the system to cast
  binding votes

16
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

17
Madrid municipality (1)

• Up to date, the most significant e-participation
  project in Europe
• All citizens (regardless of their nationality)
  older than 16 of the central district of Madrid
  (totalling 120.000 persons) will be asked 3
  questions about the municipal priorities for the
  district
• Multi channel Internet, kiosks and mobile phones
• Official webpage www.madridparticipa.org

18
Madrid municipality (2)
Partners
Dates
Introducing the preliminary report of the event
July
Voting
June 28-30th
Starting the promotion
June 14th
Presenting the project
May 21st
19
Contents

• About Scytl
• Scytls approach to Internet voting security
• Internet voting in Europe
• Example 1 The Swiss Canton of Neuchâtel
• Example 2 2003 Elections to the Parliament of
  Catalonia
• Example 3 Madrid Participa
• Concluding remarks

20
Conclusions

• A number of successful Internet voting
  experiments have already taken place in several
  European countries
• The possibility of increasing democratic
  participation, and of achieving more efficiency
  in democracy, is taken very seriously
  e-democracy is seen as an enabling tool
• The European Union, and every country (at its own
  pace) are working towards implementing Internet
  voting in elections and/or in consultations
• The leadership of the European Union could be a
  definitive step to join individual efforts and
  speed up the entire process
• A number of countries will deploy Internet voting
  for certain segments of the electorate such as
  citizens living abroad while poll-site voting
  will still be completely based on paper (no use
  of DREs at all)
• Security is a primary concern, but it is seen as
  something achievable
• E-participation could be the incontestable winner
  in the short term