Remote Evoting experiment

1
Remote E-voting experiment

• Election of the Dutch members of the European
  parliament on June 10th, 2004

Sebastiaan Hupkes Policy advisor remote e-voting
project Concept Presentation remote e-Voting
March 17th, 2005.
2
The Dutch electoral system

• Proportional representation
• A political party obtaining 10 of the votes cast
  also obtains 10 of the seats
• Types of elections
• House of Representatives, Provincial councils,
  Municipal councils and European Parliament
• Target group for the e-voting experiment The
  Dutch voters residing abroad
• May only vote for the House of Representatives
  and European Parliament. Before the introduction
  of remote e-voting, this group is allowed to cast
  their vote by post

3
E-voting in The Netherlands

• Electronic voting machines have been in use in
  The Netherlands for a some time (1980s)
• The usage of electronic voting machines has
  grown. Advantages
• Greater efficiency in the polling station
• Results are known quickly after closing of
  polling station
• Voting Machines have to meet the formal
  requirements and approval. (Handout the formal
  regulations set up by the Ministry of the
  Interior)

? Today, almost all voting districts use
electronic voting machines
4
History of the remote e-voting project

• In October 2000 the Remote voting project was
  started by the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and
  Kingdom relations
• The long-term objective was to improve
  accessibility of the voting process by making it
  independent of a particular location.
• Short term project target
• For Dutch citizens abroad experiment with voting
  through internet/telephone (remote e-voting)
• For Dutch citizens in The Netherlands
  experiments with voting in a polling station of
  their own choice (not being dealt with in this
  presentation)
• Experiments to be done during the election of
  the Dutch members of the European parliament in
  June 2004.

5
Remote e-voting why only for voters abroad?

• Voting process in The Netherlands is surrounded
  by many safeguards, among others
• Freedom to cast your vote
• In regular polling stations this safeguard can
  be dealt with. It is difficult to guarantee the
  freedom to vote by introducing voting via
  internet or telephone. However, the voters abroad
  were already allowed to cast their vote via post,
  which has the same problem.

? For voters abroad, remote e-voting was
considered acceptable if it can be done safely
securely
6
Voting channels and remote E-voting
7
Legal foundation for the experiments

• The Dutch Elections Act relevant regulations
  describe the voting process in great detail.
  However, the Elections Act excludes remote
  e-voting.
• A legal foundation for the experiments was
  needed. The Elections act was not changed
  instead, the additional Experiments Act was
  created to
• Allow experiments to enable voters to vote in a
  polling station of their own choice
• Allow experiments to enable remote e-voting using
  information- and communication technology (ICT)
• Handout The Experiments Act

8
Starting points remote e-voting service

• Remote e-voting has to comply with the safeguards
  of the current voting process
• The secret ballot
• One person, one vote
• Eligibility to vote
• Integrity
• Accessibility
• Controllability
• Transparency for the voters.
• The service has to be reliable and secure
• The Council of Europe (COE) has adopted a
  Recommendation on e-voting E-voting shall be as
  reliable and secure as democratic elections and
  referendums which do not involve the use of
  electronic means. This general principle
  encompasses all electoral matters

9
How did we ensure reliability security?

• Two user trials were held as part of the
  acceptance test
• Inspections and reviews of the source code
• Risk analyses
• Penetration tests stress tests
• Redundancy for critical equipment
• Security audits
• Electoral committee

? about 640.000 was spent on tests
10
Open Source

• Dutch government has policy towards open source
• Open Source should be considered
• The software which was developed for the voting
  service has been published on www.ososs.nl

? Everybody can review the software that was used
11
Electoral committee

• Electoral committee monitors the election, the
  system and the system operators 24 hours per day
  
• The electoral committee is independent and
  autonomous
• Electoral committee controls the election (open,
  close, suspend)
• Has access to all information (e.g. source
  code)
• Electoral committee counts the votes after
  election closure.
• Consists of three citizens and one back-up

Electoral committee control screen
12
Voter support

• Service Desk, available during registration and
  voting period (24 hours/day during the voting
  period) by
• phone,
• fax and
• e-mail
• Internet demo at demo.internetstembureau.nl
• Telephone demo

13
... Now how does remote e-voting work?

• For the voter, the process consists of 6 steps
• Voter fills in Registration Form
• Registration is processed by municipality The
  Hague
• Voter receives voting documents
• Voter contacts the voting service and
  authenticates
• Voter selects candidate
• Voter confirms candidate and vote is cast

14
1. Voter registration

• The registration form is sent automatically to
  those voters who registered in the last election
• The registration can be downloaded from the
  internet.
• Voter fills in the registration form and sends it
  together with a proof of identity (such as a copy
  of the passport) to the municipality The Hague
• Voter has to keep the Access code, for it can not
  be distributed to him

The voter has a new choice Internet/Telephone
The voter fills in an access code of his/her
choice
A reminder slip to prevent the voter from
forgetting the access code
15
2. Registration is processed

• a) Municipality The Hague checks eligibility to
  vote (among others it crosschecks the signature
  on the registration form with the signature on
  the passport) and stores voter data
• b) Voters data (incl. the access code) are sent
  to remote e-voting project.
• c) The Access code is stored in the remote
  e-voting system (without a link to the identity
  of the voter)
• d) The remote e-voting system generates a Voting
  Code
• e) Voting documents (incl. Voting Code) are sent
  to voter
• In total 7197 voters have registered for voting
  via internet or telephone

16
3. Voter receives Voting Documents

• The voter receives an envelope with
• Letter with the Voting code covered by a PIN
  mailer
• Closed envelope containing the overview of
  candidates and the candidate codes
• User manual

Overview of candidates
Each candidate has unique candidate code
Letter
Voting code protected by PIN mailer
17
4. Voter contacts remote e-voting system and
authenticates

• Authentication by means of the Voting code the
  Access code (see demonstration)
• Codes are entered through the telephone or
  through the internet (web page)

Voting code
Access code
Authentication page
18
5. Voter selects candidate

• Votes makes his/her choice by entering the 9
  numbers of the candidates candidate code

Candidate code
Candidate selection page
19
6. Voter confirms, and casts vote

• The voter has to confirm his/her vote. After
  confirmation the vote is cast.

Name of political party
Candidate name
CONFIRM
Confirmation page
20
June 10th Execution of the remote e-voting
experiment

• The e-voting system was open from june 1st
  2004, until june 10th 2004 (10 days, 24 hours)
• During that period, 5351 voters cast their vote
• 4871 votes through internet
• 480 votes by telephone
• Remote e-Voting system, operating staff and
  electoral committee were located at a secured
  site (computer data centre) in Rotterdam
• Votes were successfully counted using an
  independently developed counting program at a
  publicly accessible location

21
What have we learned?

• Remote e-voting
• Most voters prefer internet voting to telephone
  voting
• The vast majority of Internet and telephone
  voters (88) found Internet/telephone voting
  easier than voting by post, by proxy or using a
  voters pass. 97 would use remote e-voting again
  (if available)
• Voters expect to receive their voting
  documents in electronic form, rather than by
  post
• A voting period of 10 days is quite long can be
  shorter

22
Next steps

• Remote e-voting
• As a next step, the ministry of the Interior
  will be investigate in 2005 if its possible to
  design an electronic procedure (i.e. through
  internet) for voter registration and sending of
  the voting documents
• In 2005 a decision will be made if for the
  parliamentary elections in 2007 a new experiments
  will be held, and what the scope will be of such
  an experiment.

23
Questions discussion
24

• Thank you for your attention!

25
Voting process safeguards
26
The following six slides display the internet
demo screens
27
(No Transcript)
28
(No Transcript)
29
(No Transcript)
30
(No Transcript)
31
(No Transcript)
32
(No Transcript)
33
The Counting Process

• Electoral committee closes the election
• A copy is made of the encrypted ballot box
• The copy is transferred (electronically) to the
  electoral committee
• The electoral committee uses the counting program
  to read/import the candidate codes, the encrypted
  ballot box and the keys for encryption
• Electronic ballot box is decrypted
• Votes are counted
• Report is generated and read aloud.

34
The Counting Program
(Re)Start
Delete all data
Import candidate codes
Import encrypted ballot box
Import Private key
Import Public key
Decrypt ballot box
Count
Report
Close
? Counting procedure press the buttons from top
to bottom