e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de e-Voting Status Quo Germany Open Rights Group: Taking the lid off e-Voting London, 08/02/2007 Ulrich Wiesner

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 2 Germany: Voting Computers  Permitted since 1999  Only certified vendor is Nedap  Sold 600 computers to City of Cologne in 1998  Other cities joined since then: Dortmund, Neuss, Cottbus, Koblenz  Covering 2’000 of 80’000 ballot offices  Hamburg decided to introduce Digital Pen in 10/2005  Based on Anoto Technology  Prototype tested in 2005  Vendor selected in 01/2007 (Windows based system)  IBM Germany announced to develop a roll-in/roll-out offering (embedded Linux and Java)  Adds 1600 ballot offices at once Circle size represents number of ballot offices using computers

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 3 Digital Pen  2D dot pattern, 90 dpi  Dots are offset in 4 directions (up, down, left, right)  Pattern of 6x6 dots provide coordinates for pen,  Addresses * 4 36 squares of 2x2mm 2 e.g. 20’000x20’000 km 2  *)Anoto refers to 60M km 2

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 4 Digital Pen  Pen with embedded scanner  Paper contains dot pattern acting as a 2D bar code  Pen recognises coordinates where it writes  Electronic representation of marked areas is uploaded to computer and joined with electronic voting form  Paper ballot is put in ballot box  At end of election:  Computer classifies electronic votes  Ambiguously marked scans are presented to officials  Classified votes are counted by computer  Inherent paper trail  Kick-starts the re-count discussion  Is it acceptable to only count a random sample?  Which sample size is required?  How does a recount needs to be organised?  Hamburg plans to count paper ballots in 1.5% of the ballot offices. No recounts after first election.

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 5 Germany: e-Counting  Manual capture of paper ballots  Barcode scanner (code next to chosen option on ballot paper)  PC based entering via keyboard  4 eye principle  Used in local elections only  Lacking appropriate legal basis  No certification process  Southern Germany  Baden-Würtemberg, Bayern, Hessen

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 6 Germany: Opposition  Little media coverage other than modernisation euphoria  But detailled and frequent reports by Richard Sietmann in major computer magazine (c’t)  Other media picking up since Q4/2006  Election scrutiny  2005 Bundestag election challenged because of use of Nedaps  Violating election principles transparency and audit-ability  Turned down in December 2006  Next step is constitutional court  2006 Cottbus major election challenged  Turned down immediately  2006 On-line petition against voting computers  Filed by Tobias Hahn, Berlin, Signed by 45’000+ people  Pending with petition committee of the Bundestag  Chaos Computer Club, Berlin  Involved in Nedap-Hack  Active campaign supporting petition and scrutiny

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 7 Issues / To does  No national campaign  Do we need one? Should it be European or national?  Can existing organisations pick up?  How can we maintain non-partisan character of the issue?  Digital pen adds new quality  Technology requires research  Security needs to be analysed  Paper trail verification issues need to be understood  Available knowledge on recounts need to be applied to German electoral system  Lack of awareness  Many Politicians and Journalists still unaware of e-Voting and related issues  Vendors still gets away with aim to provide the modern approach to elections  Discussion needs to leave the IT corner  Efficiency of electoral systems?  Does participation require more complex electoral systems and more frequent polls?  Might/will drive purchase of e-Voting technology

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de Questions and Answers

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 9 Germany: Election Organisation  Election Organisation  National Electoral Act and Electoral Code provide framework  National elections are supervised by Ministry of Interior  Execution is with municipalities  Costs are refunded to municipalities by a lump sum per voter  Use of technology  Ministry of Interior is regulator (authorisation)  Municipalities are free in decision if and what to use within regulatory framework  Voter registration  Law enforces that citizens register their residence with the municipality  Voter register is prepared by municipality from residence register  No requirement for voters to enrol in register  No central registers for residence or voters on federal or state level  Process is relatively incident free

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 10 Germany: Electoral System  National Parliament  2 votes: One for regional candidate, one for party in federal state  Parliaments of Federal States  Typically 2 votes (candidate and party) or just one vote (party)  Regional Elections  County, Municipality, (Major)  System varies from state to state  Often similar systems to national level  Some states have complex electoral systems  E.g. Frankfurt: One vote for each seat (85) in the Council  Absentee voting  Via mail on request

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 11 Germany: Remote e-voting  Late 1990‘s  Significant effort in research, projects W.I.E.N, VoteRemote  05/2002:  Minister of the Interior announces remote e-Voting for 2006 or 2010  10/2002  Parliament discusses remote e-Voting: supported by all 5 parties  Perception that Germany is “behind”  New channel in addition to ballot office and mail  Hope that higher turnout can be achieved using internet voting  Debate is focussed on if internet voting should be used to vote more often (supported by Labour and Greens, opposed by Conservatives)  Since 2004  Ministry of Interior considers internet voting to be appropriate for non- political elections only  Main concern is that secrecy of the vote can not be enforced

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 12 Black box voting Hypothesis:  Every electronic voting system violates at least one of the three procedural election principles: Secrecy, Transparency, Verifiability  Every electronic voting system requires trust into vendor and operators  Trust is inappropriate measure to ensure election integrity Secret?Transparent?Verifiable?

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 13 Election Principles  Verifiability, transparency and secrecy ensure that elections are free, fair and general

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de Election Scrutiny  Bundestag election, September 19 th, 2005  Four e-Voting related complaints filed with scrutiny committee of the parliament  Federal Ministry of the Interior replied in May 2006:  No evidence of tampering, threads are hypothetical”  Elections are still transparent and verifiable using Nedaps  Nedaps can not be hacked because source code is private  Manipulation is pointless because Nedaps are configured just before election and hackers can’t know which party is on which button  Election integrity is ensured by procedural framework  Bundestag rejected complaints on December 14 th, 2006  Mainly follows arguments of Ministry of the Interior  Next step is Constitutional Court  To be filed by 14/02/2007

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 15 Legal framework  Transparency and verifiability is substantial part of legal framework, but not repeated in context of e-Voting

e-Voting: Status Quo Germanyulrichwiesner.de 16 Upcoming Elections  Germany  No major computer based elections in 2007  Spring 2008 – Hessen and Nordrhein-Westfalen (Nedap)  Spring 2008 – Hamburg (Digital Pen)  Spring 2009 – European Parliament (Digital Pen?, Nedap)  Autum 2009 – Bundestag (Digital Pen?, Nedap)