Peter Trei wrote:
>>
>I entirely agree. I don't truely trust voting machines either - I would like
>to see all elections decided by paper ballots stuffed in a box, after being
>marked in a way which is private, and publically observable to be private.
>The ballots should be counted with representatives of all candidates
>present.
This has been the same when secret voting was introduced. The people did
not have trust in the system. The public voting was much easier to control.
but why do we trust in secret voting? Do you check every step from casting
your vote to the final result? I personally don´t.
With regard to Per Kangru´s initial question.
At university of Osnabrueck, they did have e-voting in their last student
parliament elections (www.internetwahlen.de). Maybe that will help, you
only need to read German :-)
Voting by mail is in Germany allowed as an exception. The constitutional
court did allow this way in order to include old or whatever people. The
reality is, that in some cities the percentage has been in the last
national elections between 20 and 30 percent. this is not an exception.
What to do?
I think the first step with elections via computer will be that these
computers will be placed in public places (like it used to be). This will
happen quite soon. It pretty much depends on the tool you can vote with how
fast the last step can be reached: voting from home. If e.g. cell phones
can be used, I guess it won´t be very long.
Harald Neymanns
