ETEN 29332 EPOLL Project

1
E-TEN 29332 E-POLL Project

• Electronic Polling System for Remote Operation
• Strasbourg 23-24 November 2006
• Fabio Perossini

2
E-Poll objectives

• Definition of a Pan-European approach to e-voting
  services covering the entire process of running a
  electoral event, specifying technologies and
  procedures to fit needs coming from all European
  countries in order to allow European citizen to
  vote everywhere.
• Run large scale pilots to validate specifications
  defined and to test requirements.

3
Legal standards
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11
Principles

• Universal suffrage E-Poll has been designed to
  facilitate the use to all citizen categories
  independently by their abilities, culture,
  language and location
• Equal suffrage To facilitate the cultural change
  E-Poll implemented the most flexible mechanism to
  support full electronic voting as well as
  printing votes and/or prove of vote during its
  operation and counting
• Free suffrage E-Poll system has been designed by
  institutions having in mind the genuinity of
  vote providing extensive information to voters
  as well as a clear voting process
• Secret suffrage Two separated networks to
  support one side authentication of voters and on
  the side casting of votes, while the concept of
  observer has been included in the process.

4
Legal standards
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11
Procedural safeguards

• Transparency Communication to voters, testing of
  systems, comment collection in the E-Poll project
  are supported at different levels voters,
  operators, politicians.
• Verifiability and accountability E-poll project
  bases all development on a full open source
  platform and all source codes are completely
  opened to external verifications. In each country
  national institutions are providing the proper
  certification for each single event (adaptation).
• Reliability and security All the system is
  centralised in the electoral authority, central
  and on field operation are managed only by
  electoral officers and ballot box could be opened
  only when operations are closed and two people
  are involved. The presence of printed votes on
  paper secure a possible re-counting.

5
Operational Standards
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11
Operational safeguards

• Notification communication to all stakeholders a
  priority in the E-Poll project while the process
  is entirely covered by the system.
• Voters E-Poll can manage centralised and
  distributed voters lists providing electronic and
  traditional authentication
• Candidates each voter with the E-Poll system can
  see his constituency candidates and the proper
  ballot paper.

6
Operational Standards
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11
Operational safeguards

• Voting Genuinity of vote a priority in E-Poll
  each voter can see the ballot paper related to
  his constituency and vote using his traditional
  procedure. E-Poll could provide the citizen with
  a vote expression receipt without copy of the
  vote cast.
• Results E-Poll counting process can start only
  if all voting stations have been closed and must
  be started by two separated people. Re-counting
  of paper votes caste in constituencies ballot
  boxes is still possible.
• Audit The E-Poll system provides full access for
  audit operations. The software is public domain.

7
Technical requirements
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11

• Accessibility Pininfarina designed a voting
  station accessible for all. E-Poll consortium
  collected requirements before and after each test
  directly from citizens, administrators and
  politicians.
• Interoperability E-Poll last system full
  compliant with EML (Election Markup Language),
  while the whole software has been developed in
  open source environment for free and democratic
  access.
• System operation E-Poll software could be
  published excluding data protection software.
  Redundancy of systems is a key requirement while
  clients are designed in order to boot directly
  from a memory card provided by the institution.
  E-Poll approach is oriented to provide attended
  vote on VPNs or Internet depending from the level
  of security required.

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Technical requirements
E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11

• Security
• Two separated networks one for authentication one
  for voting to maintain privacy of individuals
• Voting stations are remotely monitored. Locally
  only the officer can operate.
• E-Poll can perform remote e-voting providing the
  proper candidates list and ballot papers for
  elections running in different countries (e.g.
  European Parliament)
• The voting grant in E-Poll is given only after
  the voter authentication on a smart card and it
  is removed after the vote
• The vote is sealed and will be open only during
  the counting after the closure of all voting
  stations
• Shuffling of votes is done before counting in
  order to increase anonymity of votes
• A printed vote (on paper) is going in a real
  ballot box in the citizen constituency while the
  votes receive a receipt (on paper) stating he
  expressed his right
• Inside the voting station a complementary copy is
  printed to cope with potential claims

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E-Poll ergonomics
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E-POLL looping workplan

• Three working groups are going to be established
  to address in each country issues related to
• Regulations
• Technologies and Security
• Organisation at local level
• These groups will define a specification document
  that will be consolidated after pilots in each
  country

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E-Poll enlarging approach

• The E-Poll project is based on a dynamic approach
  so to involve new stakeholders during its 36
  months duration. Each actor can decide to
  participate one or more of the working groups
• Those (both institutions, industrials or
  associations) ,who are interested to join the
  E-Poll working team will be able to send a
  request to
• roberto.donnini_at_siemens.com