Estonia, Internet, Legislation, Society, Technology

"We wish collecting and counting of electronic envelopes containing e-votes to be still easier to control and prove to persons from outside or observers," chairman Tarvi Martens told BNS on Monday.

The current overhaul ideas do not directly concern voters but the way the mechanism behind online voting works, Martens explained: "So that it would be possible to prove that the performed operations were executed correctly and if for instance the votes cast electronically were to move wrongly it would be found out very quickly."

Martens hopes the changes will be operational in time for the local elections in 2017. A review of whether and which laws and regulations would have to be amended for this is also underway.

"The aim of the changes is to make the Estonian electronic voting system even more transparent. This would increase reliability of elections, as trust in elections can mainly be grown through spreading knowledge and running afterchecks," Martens said.

"As a nice coincidental factor, the Estonian electronic voting model could in the course of this change become usable also outside the context of national elections," the electronic voting chief added. This means the system could be used for smaller votes such as internal elections of political parties or trade unions. "We've also been approached by universities that quite often need to carry out various elections," he noted.

"If the same model were to be used outside Estonia, our electronic voting would also be more trusted internationally. The new model offers an opportunity for this," Martens said.

Martens was one of the speakers at an international forum on electronic voting held at the University of Tartu at the end of last week to mark the 10th anniversary of online voting in Estonia.