And a final post for today. Jordi Barrat gave me note about a job offering for a PhD position on E-Voting. He is constitutional law professor at the University of Alicante. You don’t need to be proficient in Spanish although it would definitely help a lot 😉

Read more here:

Framework: The position is funded by the Spanish government within the
following research project: SEJ2007-64886 (Citizens, new technologies and decision process: the e-voting challenges).

The main goal of the project consist in assessing the challenges of e-voting systems with an approach based on social sciences, including law, political science and philosophy. Its members belong to different Spanish Universities: the University of Barcelona, the Complutense University of Madrid and the Rovira i Virgili University.

Topic: Electronic Voting. It includes, but it is not limited, the following topics:

• certification procedures
• digital divide
• auditability
• transparency
• vote’s secrecy
• freedom of vote
• usability
• technoscience
• identification procedures
• electoral authorities
• political socialization
• effects on turnout

Years: 2008 / 2011 (4 years)

Location: Depending on the scientific profile of the candidate.

He/She will work together with one of our current

members who belong to different Universities: Law (Alacant,

Complutense or Rovira i Virgili), Political Sciencie and Philosphy

(Barcelona).

Call for candidatures: expected January 2008.

People interested should send ASAP a cv and a short research outline to jordi.barrat@ua.es

I had the chance to review an earlier version of the manuscript – it gives a good introduction on the tough job on how to observe and monitor implementations of technology in the electoral process. This overview can serve as a good starting point for looking into the interdisciplinary issues involved and gives an overview on the international legal instruments that can help doing so.

From the guide’s abstract:

“This Guide will serve as a practical guide for nonpartisan monitors and political competitors. It will outline the various applications of electronic technologies in the election process, the critical points where transparency and access are needed to verify the integrity of the technologies, and common techniques for verifying their integrity.

The specific objective of the Guide is to increase the understanding of civil society and political party leaders regarding: (a) what access and transparency measures to demand to establish safeguards concerning electronic electoral technologies; and (b) what skills their organizations will need to develop to verify the integrity of electronic electoral technologies.”

Please contact Laura Grace (lgrace@ndi.org) from NDI for obtaining a copy.

Following the successful VOTE-ID conference in Bochum last year, the conference chairs, Ammar Alkassar and Melanie Volkamer managed to accomplish very interesting post proceedings to appear the in the prestigious LNCS series from Springer publications.

The following articles are included:

The Development of Remote E-Voting Around the World: A Review of Roads and Directions
Robert Krimmer, Stefan Triessnig und Melanie Volkamer

• Remote Voting Schemes: A Comparative Analysis
  Jordi Puiggali und Victor Morales-Rocha
• Internet-Voting: Opportunity or Threat for Democracy?
  Emmanuel Benoist, Bernhard Anrig und David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle
• Assessing Procedural Risks and Threats in e-Voting: Challenges and an Approach
  Komminist Weldemariam, Adolfo Villafiorita und Andrea Mattioli
• Compliance of RIES to the Proposed e-Voting Protection Profile
  Hugo Jonker und Melanie Volkamer
• Compliance of POLYAS with the BSI Protection Profile ? Basic Requirements for Remote Electronic Voting Systems
  Kai Reinhard und Wolfgang Jung
• Electronic Voting in Belgium: Past and Future
  Danny De Cock und Bart Preneel
• The Digital Voting Pen at the Hamburg Elections 2008: Electronic Voting Closest to Conventional Voting
  Joerg Arzt-Mergemeier, Willi Beiss und Thomas Steffens
• The Security Analysis of e-Voting in Japan
  Hiroki Hisamitsu und Keiji Takeda
• Bingo Voting: Secure and Coercion-Free Voting Using a Trusted Random Number Generator
  Jens-Matthias Bohli, Jörn Müller-Quade und Stefan Röhrich
• Enhancing the Trust and Perceived Security in e-Cognocracy
  Joan Josep Piles, José Luis Salazar, José Ruíz und José María Moreno-Jiménez
• Simulation-Based Analysis of E2E Voting Systems
  Olivier de Marneffe, Olivier Pereira und Jean-Jacques Quisquater
• A Simple Technique for Safely Using Punchscan and Prêt à Voter in Mail-In Elections Stefan Popoveniuc und David Lundin
• Threat Analysis of a Practical Voting Scheme with Receipts
  Sebastien Foulle, Steve Schneider, Jacques Traoré und Zhe Xia
• Secure Internet Voting with Code Sheets
  Jörg Helbach und Jörg Schwenk
• CodeVoting Protection Against Automatic Vote Manipulation in an Uncontrolled Environment
  Rui Joaquim und Carlos Ribeiro

For more information on how to obtain see:

http://www.springerlink.com/content/l3858136u758/

In the past months we enhanced our e-voting database both visually and functionality wise.
First of all we updated it to our CI and second also added the functionality to make accounts.
If you wish changes and addendums to the database can now be attributed to your account so
everybody can who that smart-ass is to have added all the information on - maybe the US e-elections (especially any elections on the Internet)?
We really need your support to add here more information so if you can spare some time and help us make this database more complete, do so! check it out at db.e-voting.cc/US

Matt Drudge is reporting that some areas of New Hampshire are running out of Democratic ballots.

Jeffrey Toobin has an interesting analysis of the Indiana case in the Talk of the Town Section of the New Yorker.

Doug Chapin of electionline.org and Ray Martinez, previously a commissioner at the EAC and now head of governmental affairs at Rice, weigh in on the Crawford case in Sunday’s Washington Times.

Doug and Ray point out that, for all the heated rhetoric over voter ID, there remains painfully sparse empirical evidence regarding the impact of voter ID on hindering the right to vote or on assuring the integrity of the electoral process.

They call for further research in the area, but they don’t really say what the they think the Court should do in the interim–deny standing, kick it back to the lower court, or what.

Here is a great story about what is considered fraud in other countries that we do not consider here.

Georgia goes to the polling booths Saturday to elect the President amidst fears from the opposition that the authorities have planned to rig the vote.

Levan Gachechiladze, the presidential candidate representing nine opposition groups fighting President Mikhail Saakashvili, alleged that “What is currently happening in Georgia is not a free election. We cannot use media outlets or promotional means,” Gachechiladze said in a statement broadcast on Georgian television. “A smear campaign is being staged against the opposition in the media,” he added. Although the authorities insisted that the election process would be free and fair, Gachechiladze has alerted his supporters to be vigilant at polling stations.

It is access to media, the ability to campaign freely, or the ability to field the opposition candidates of choice that are considered election fraud elsewhere. Affecting the election on the front end betters the prospects of not having to do the polling place shenanigans that are also of concern.

This from the International Herald Tribune. Internet voting….what a great idea.

Thanks to the Internet, Americans who belong to the Democratic Party are getting a voice of their own in the presidential nomination, as the party has agreed to allow expatriates to choose 22 delegates to the national convention as part of the so-called Super Tuesday voting next month.

Everyone Counts, a company based in San Diego that specializes in online voting, is running the Internet voting for the Democrat primary for overseas residents. Everyone Counts handled the voting by Internet for local elections in British cities in 2003 and 2007 as well as the online voting for the Australian election in November, handling voting by soldiers stationed in Iraq and other spots overseas.

The Democratic primary for Americans abroad will start Feb. 5, the Tuesday when 21 states will hold primaries, and run until Feb. 12. In addition to voting by Internet, people can also cast ballots by mail, fax or – in 34 countries – they can vote in person.

“Internet allows people to participate who are busy and wouldn’t normally get involved,” said Meredith Gowan Le Goff, a lawyer who is the vice chairman for Democrats Abroad in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. “We want all people to be able to take part in the primary whether they are a Peace Corps worker in Africa or a missionary somewhere in Asia.”