For many of us, the fall of the Berlin wall was a remarkable event. It demonstrated the strength that lies with people as soon as they recognize they have an equal share in initiating, participating and deciding their future for themselves. With a rising number of nations around the world adopting democratic structures and principles, democracy itself had to face changes. From the direct vote on legislation in the city-state Athenian democracy to larger and territorial democracies that emerged in the the early 18th century; power sharing amongst people has taken many forms. While this evolving form of sharing power seemed to rapidly accelerate with the fall of communism, it would only be challenged by modernization in the years to come.

The global availability of the Internet is now radically challenging the concept of democracy. Today, the criterion of residing within the geographical boundaries of your home country determining one’s ability to participate, is obsolete. For the first time, in Estonia in March 2007, citizens, no matter where they were located in the world, could vote in their national parliamentary election as long as they had internet access.  (See pages 56-57 for World Map of e-voting Use)

What seemed to be easily implemented solution, quickly became very challenging. First, enabling eligible voters to participate while guaranteeing secrecy of the their vote is not trivial. Second, an analysis must show a country is ready to complement their existing electoral procedures with a multi-channel approach such as internet voting. To evaluate the readiness of a country, (1) the social, legal and political context and (2) e-voting specific criteria have to be considered. 

The “political context” considers the democratization of a country by measuring sub-dimensions like “institutional stability” or “stateness”. A stable democracy is necessary for the introduction of E-democracy applications like e-voting.

The “legal context” measures the basics for democratic elections like the existence of an election system or supplementary protocol for human rights required by a democracy.

The “societal infrastructure for information context” is divided into “national context” and the “individual context” of the users whereby the latter is not considered in this work. The “national level” is further divided into “technological” and “diffusion”. In this dimension there are items like computer and internet penetration; measured as an IT topic within an E-democracy.

E-voting specific criteria depends on the way e-voting is used in the private sector. It depends on how much discussion has been going on and in which way this topic is handled by the public.

On the basis of this model one is able to assess the readiness of a country to implement electronic voting. In 2008, we conducted a study  with 33 countries around the world, including European Union member states, the United States, Russia and Venezuela (See Table 1 on the next page).

However, it has to be noted that a quantitative approach is only able to make judgements on tendencies. For a proper assessment of the context and selection of the best deployment of  electronic means, qualitative approaches like a feasibility study in advance of an implementation are the way to go. However, the e-voting readiness model is the first of its kind and improvement is encouraged. 

Table 1 – The Scores of the e-voting Readiness Index. Visit www.e-voting.cc/stories/5111880 for full study.

E-voting.cc, the Competence Center for Electronic Voting and Participation
www.e-voting.cc

Contact:
Robert Krimmer, Director and Founder r.krimmer@e-voting.cc
Manuel Kripp, Project Manager m.kripp@e-voting.cc