E-TEN 29332 E-POLL Project

1. E-TEN 29332 E-POLL Project Electronic Polling System for Remote Operation Strasbourg 23-24 November 2006 Fabio Perossini

2. E-Poll objectives • Definition of a Pan-European approach to e-voting services covering the entire process of running a electoral event, specifying technologies and procedures to fit needs coming from all European countries in order to allow European citizen to vote everywhere. • Run large scale pilots to validate specifications defined and to test requirements.

3. Legal standards E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 Principles • Universal suffrage: E-Poll has been designed to facilitate the use to all citizen categories independently by their abilities, culture, language and location; • Equal suffrage: To facilitate the cultural change E-Poll implemented the most flexible mechanism to support full electronic voting as well as printing votes and/or prove of vote during its operation and counting; • Free suffrage: E-Poll system has been designed by institutions having in mind the “genuinity of vote” providing extensive information to voters as well as a clear voting process • Secret suffrage: Two separated networks to support one side authentication of voters and on the side casting of votes, while the concept of “observer” has been included in the process.

4. Legal standards E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 Procedural safeguards • Transparency: Communication to voters, testing of systems, comment collection in the E-Poll project are supported at different levels: voters, operators, politicians. • Verifiability and accountability: E-poll project bases all development on a full “open source” platform and all source codes are completely opened to external verifications. In each country national institutions are providing the proper certification for each single event (adaptation). • Reliability and security: All the system is centralised in the electoral authority, central and on field operation are managed only by electoral officers and ballot box could be opened only when operations are closed and two people are involved. The presence of printed votes on paper secure a possible re-counting.

5. Operational Standards E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 Operational safeguards • Notification: communication to all stakeholders a priority in the E-Poll project while the process is entirely covered by the system. • Voters: E-Poll can manage centralised and distributed voters lists providing electronic and traditional authentication • Candidates: each voter with the E-Poll system can see his constituency candidates and the proper ballot paper.

6. Operational Standards E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 Operational safeguards • Voting: Genuinity of vote a priority in E-Poll; each voter can see the ballot paper related to his constituency and vote using his traditional procedure. E-Poll could provide the citizen with a vote expression receipt without copy of the vote cast. • Results: E-Poll counting process can start only if all voting stations have been closed and must be started by two separated people. Re-counting of paper votes caste in constituencies ballot boxes is still possible. • Audit: The E-Poll system provides full access for audit operations. The software is public domain.

7. Technical requirements E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 • Accessibility: Pininfarina designed a voting station accessible for all. E-Poll consortium collected requirements before and after each test directly from citizens, administrators and politicians. • Interoperability: E-Poll last system full compliant with EML (Election Markup Language), while the whole software has been developed in “open source” environment for free and democratic access. • System operation: E-Poll software could be published excluding data protection software. Redundancy of systems is a key requirement while clients are designed in order to boot directly from a “memory card” provided by the institution. E-Poll approach is oriented to provide attended vote on VPNs or Internet depending from the level of security required.

8. Technical requirements E-Poll compared with Rec (2004)11 • Security: • Two separated networks one for authentication one for voting to maintain privacy of individuals; • Voting stations are remotely monitored. Locally only the officer can operate. • E-Poll can perform remote e-voting providing the proper candidates list and ballot papers for elections running in different countries (e.g. European Parliament) • The voting grant in E-Poll is given only after the voter authentication on a smart card and it is removed after the vote • The vote is sealed and will be open only during the counting after the closure of all voting stations • Shuffling of votes is done before counting in order to increase anonymity of votes • A printed vote (on paper) is going in a real ballot box in the citizen constituency while the votes receive a receipt (on paper) stating he expressed his right • Inside the voting station a complementary copy is printed to cope with potential claims

9. E-Poll ergonomics

10. E-POLL looping workplan • Three working groups are going to be established to address in each country issues related to: • Regulations • Technologies and Security • Organisation at local level • These groups will define a specification document that will be consolidated after pilots in each country

11. E-Poll enlarging approach • The E-Poll project is based on a dynamic approach so to involve new stakeholders during its 36 months duration. Each actor can decide to participate one or more of the working groups • Those (both institutions, industrials or associations) ,who are interested to join the E-Poll working team will be able to send a request to: roberto.donnini@siemens.com