E-Vote 2011 Project: Advancing Transparent Voting in Norway

1. E-vote2011project Norway COE workshop observation - Oslo 18.03.2010 Henrik Nore, Project Manager

3. Facts on voting in Norway • Elections are held bi-annually • Alternating (4y) between municipal and county elections, and parliamentary and Sami assembly elections • Norway has a proportional electoral system where parties or lists win representatives according to their relative support in the electorate • Voters are able to affect which candidates are elected by making individual changes to the ballot. • 77% turnout on parliamentary elections (decreasing)

4. The E-vote 2011 Project scope • Replace current local existing administrative system for paper-votes with a central government owned and operated system (E/I/P-votes) • Internet-voting from home/abroad in 2011 elections in in advanced voting period (Not election day) • Use online electoral roll in polling stations • Enable E-voting in poll stations for advanced voting (internet technology)

5. The E-vote 2011 Project scope • Add E-voting as supplement to paper-voting (multiple e-votes, cancel e-vote by p-vote) • No e-voting in polling station on election day • Pilots in 2011 in 11 municipalities and one county (approximately 200.000 possible voters) • If success in 2011, full scale roll-out decided by parliament in 2012

6. Implications of Internet voting • Internet voting is inherently unobservable • Therfore the role of the observers must change • Auditing of Internet voting is possible • Auditing combined with voter observation replaces the function of the observer in the polling station

7. What are Norways advantages?(and prerequisites?) • Very high public trust • Absolute trust in central election administration • Relatively low level of political conflict

8. The Black Box Problem • The counting of paper ballots is an open and observable process • Paper ballots can be recounted • E-vote recounts are absurd • When you move an open and observable process inside a computer, you introduce a black box problem

9. The Black Box Problem Our goal is to make the black box as transparent as possible.

10. What have we done so far? • Full transparency in procurement process and project • Completely open source • Use of wide spectrum of reference groups • Third party QA • Internal QA by Kåre Vollan • Complete public ownership to solution • Very active in presenting and discussing project

11. E-voting and security • Securee-voting is hard. • In e-voting, thesecurityrequirementsarereally an operationalizationofdemocraticprinciples • Secureauthentication (one voter, onevote) • Secrecyofthevote • Integrityoftheballot • Anti-collusion (everyvotecountedcorrectly)

12. The double envelope

13. Conceptual model Distribution of secrets Vote Collection Server Voting client Voter Internet Admnistrative system Air gap Return Code Generator Vote verification End-to-end verification Mix and count M of N key shares from parties with competing interests

14. Implications of Internet voting • Internet voting is inherently unobservable • Therfore the role of the observers must change • Auditing of Internet voting is possible • Auditing combined with voter observation replaces the function of the observer in the polling station

15. Questions and answers