Estonia allows cellphone voting – Could this catch on elsewhere?
By Dave Parrack
Government and presidential elections have the same problems the world over: trying to persuade people to vote and trying to stop the vote being rigged. Could Estonia’s newly announced plan to allow people to vote via cellphone solve both these problems at once?
Generally speaking, at least in democratic countries that allow their citizens to vote for who governs them, elections are pretty nasty affairs. As the recent U.S. election showed, choosing a leader can be a positive, life affirming happening, but most elections aren’t quite as important as that one happened to be.
Voter apathy is at an all-time high on most countries, with Australia being the one exception I know of due to heavy fines being placed upon people who don’t vote. That doesn’t mean Australians actively give two hoots but they are at least forced to act interested.
The other huge problem is vote rigging and election scandals. These issues don’t just affect regimes such as Zimbabwe either, but even countries who claim to be the most democratic in the world. Who can forget the huge question marks over Bush’ victories in both the 2000 and 2004 U.S Presidential elections?
The Associated Press is reporting that Estonia is set to become the first country in the world to allow its people to vote via mobile phone. The Estonian Parliament recently passed a law allowing the use of cellphones when voting in the 2011 election.
Estonia has already been one of the few leading the way in using new technology to drive votes by allowing voters to use the Internet to cast their decision in the 2007 election. The mobile voting system has already been thoroughly tested and both Finland and Sweden are also thought to be close to giving it the thumbs up.
The system works by requiring voters to use a chip in their phone which verifies the voter’s identity and allows them to use their phone to cast their vote. The chips are provided free by the same organization that issues ID cards.
This system is sure to have its problems and won’t be to everyone’s tastes. But it seems a brilliant way of using existing technology to give voters a new method of voting. I’d personally much rather use my phone than stand in an endless queue come polling day. And assuming the security system has been properly safeguarded, it could mean less vote rigging scandals.
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December 14th, 2008
Some of us CAN forget the liberal attempts to disenfranchise and cheat in 2000 and 2004 Dave. Will YOU ever give up that your darling LOST and no amount of black helicopter claims after the fact are going to change that?
My god, Aussies get fined for not voting? And that’s called freedom??? Hmmm, a key tenet of freedom and choice is the freedom to NOT make a choice! That’s ridiculous to force people to vote.
I have 3 cell phones, so I get to vote 3 times right? It would be trivial to obtain enough identity to get 3 “chips”, if illegal aliens can obtain enough credentials to vote surely I can (via multiple identities) too. Oh, wait, we’ll have a national ID card system that is fraud resistant and prevents dupicate ID’s right?
December 14th, 2008
David, only your last vote would get counted, as it overrides previous ones. It’s not the phone, it’s the SIM that identifies you (ID PIN differs from SIM PIN, btw). Duplicating the authentication and encryption module on the SIM card (or our IDs) isn’t quite as simple as photocopying some 20th-century driver’s license. The security is quite good, and crypto is top-notch. Primary security issue with the system is that there’s a theoretical possibility that some exceptionally gifted sysadmin may be able to connect your secret vote to your person, but that’s about it.