The 6th International Conference on Electronic Voting EVOTE2014 was held on 28–31 October 2014 in Lochau/Bregenz, Austria. The conference – which celebrates its tenth anniversary – is one of the leading international events for e-voting. It was attended by experts from all over the world. Its objective is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary and open discussion of all issues relating to electronic voting. The theme this year was “Verifying the vote”. The proceedings of the conference are online.
Session seven (Thursday, 30 October) was dedicated to e-voting international (legal) standards. I presented my paper on lessons learned from the application of the Council of Europe’s Recommendation on e-voting during the past ten years. I also introduced a few proposals on how to tackle updating work. My intervention followed a presentation by Gregor Wenda who focused mainly on organizational and political efforts to have the Recommendation updated.
The session and the following panel discussion were moderated by Nadja Braun Binder. Participants confirmed that the interest in the Recommendation and its update is strong not only in the Council of Europe region but in other latitudes as well. The Recommendation is for example used as a model for an e-voting regulatory framework especially in Latin America. Participants suggested that comments on its update be called from outside the region as well. E-tools could be envisaged to ensure such a broad participation.
My paper (see abstract below) is based on my November 2013 report on a possible update of Recommendation (2004) 11. The report was mandated by the Council of Europe and was discussed in an experts’ meeting last December in Vienna as well as at the biannual review meeting on the Recommendation – the fifth one – which took place back to back with EVOTE, on Tuesday 28 in Lochau.
Abstract— E-voting must comply with requirements for democratic votes and elections. Adopted in 2004, the Council of Europe Recommendation Rec(2004)11 is one of the first regulatory efforts in this area and so far the only one at the international level. Its ambition is to map legal principles for democratic elections with operational and technical requirements specific to e-voting. This paper presents an overview of lessons learned from the application of the Recommendation during the past ten years and discusses the need for an update.
