Some countries are testing and considering the introduction of remote e-voting especially, and sometimes even exclusively, for their citizens who are living or staying abroad. However, only a few countries allow external voters to cast their votes electronically. Furthermore, there are a few experiments with remote e-voting for external electors, and sometimes expressions of political intentions to consider the question of remote e-voting for external electors. This section highlights some examples of countries that are considering remote e-voting for their citizens abroad.
Austria
In Austria, e-voting is not a top priority for the government. Nevertheless, the Austrian Federal Council of Ministers approved an e-government strategy in May 2003, in which e-voting is listed as a project in the annex, and in the spring of 2004 the Federal Ministry of Interior established a working group on e-voting in order to study and report on various aspects of e-voting (Federal Chancellery 2003; and www.bmaa.gv.at/ view.php3?f_id=6016&LNG=de&version). The working group was not dealing with the question of e-voting for external electors. However, the explanatory memorandum to the Austrian Federal Act on Provisions Facilitating Electronic Communication with Public Bodies (the e-Government Act, available in English at www.ris.bka. gv.at/erv/erv_2004_1_10.pdf>;), which came into force on 1 March 2004, explains the provision for setting up a supplementary electronic register as ‘a first step towards enabling Austrian expatriates in future for example to be given the possibility of casting votes at Austrian elections in electronic form’ (Explanatory memorandum to the act, in German). In early 2007, the Federal Council of Ministers affirmed its willingness to look into remote e-voting as an additional means of voting as part of a bigger reform of democracy (see www.wienerzeitung.at/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabID=3858&Ali as=wzo&cob=274850).
Estonia
Discussions on remote e-voting started in Estonia in 2001 and one year later, the legal provisions for it were put in place. During summer 2003 the National Electoral Committee started the e-voting project. The system includes the use of smart cards and electronic signatures (see National Election Committee 2005). The first tests of the remote e-voting system were held in late 2004 and 2005 during local referendums and elections. In March 2007 Estonia held the world’s first national Internet election. A total of 30,275 citizens (3.4 per cent) used remote e-voting which was available to Estonian voters in Estonia as well as abroad (see National Election Committee, ‘Evoting Project’).
France
On 1 June 2003, French citizens residing in the USA were given the possibility of electing their representatives to the Council of French Citizens Abroad (Conseil supérieur des Français de l’étranger, CSFE; since 2004 the Assemblée des Français de l’étranger, AFE) by remote e-voting. The AFE is a public law body that is allowed to elect 12 members of the upper house of the French Parliament, the Senate. In 2003, the Forum des droits sur l’internet (Internet Rights Forum), a private body supported by the French Government, published recommendations on the future of e-voting in France. It recommended that remote e-voting should not be introduced, except for French citizens abroad who should be able to elect the CSFE by voting over the Internet (see Internet Rights Forum 2003). For the elections of 18 June 2006 all French citizens abroad were able to choose between three voting channels—personal voting, postal voting or electronic voting (Ministry of Foreign Affairs March 2006).
The Netherlands
In most districts in the Netherlands, voting is done electronically at polling stations. The Dutch Government is also considering and testing remote e-voting (www.minbzk. nl/uk/different_government/remote_e-voting_in; and Caarls 2004). Dutch nationals resident abroad are entitled to vote in elections to the House of Representatives and the European Parliament (Hupkes 2005). They have to register with the municipality of The Hague for each individual legislative or European election. Dutch electors resident abroad are considered to be an ideal test group for an experiment with e-voting and telephone voting because they are already permitted to vote by post. The purpose of the e-voting project was to ease access for electors abroad and to encourage their participation in elections. The evaluation of the use of e-voting during the elections to the European Parliament in June 2004 showed that e-voting had an added value and made voting more accessible. Subsequently, in the legislative elections in November 2006, Internet voting was made available again as an experiment and an alternative to postal voting for Dutch voters abroad. A total of 19,815 valid ballots were cast in this way (see www.minbzk.nl/bzk2006uk/subjects/constitution_and/internet_elections).
the United States, Mexico and Chile were invited to participate using any computer connected to the Internet. The Generalitat de Catalunya sponsored this pilot to examine the use of secure electronic voting in the future (see www.gencat.net/governacio-ap/eleccions/e-votacio.htm).
Switzerland
In August 2000 the Swiss Government gave the Federal Chancellery the task of examining the feasibility of remote e-voting. An interim report of the Swiss Federal Chancellery on remote e-voting called Swiss living or staying abroad ‘the most suitable target group’ because remote e-voting could save them time, increase effectiveness and save costs (Federal Chancellery August 2004). Since 2002, a variety of legally binding tests of remote e-voting have been carried out in the cantons of Geneva (see www.ge.ch/ evoting), Neuchâtel (see www.bk.admin.ch/themen/pore/evoting/00776;). In March 2007 the Swiss Parliament adopted the legal basis for harmonizing the voter registers for Swiss voters abroad. This is the first step towards the offering the Swiss abroad the possibility of remote e-voting, for which there is a strong demand (see www.aso.ch;).
The USA
The USA built an Internet-based electronic voting system for the US Department of Defense’s Federal Voting Assistance Program (FVAP). The SERVE voting system, as it was called (Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment), was planned for deployment in the 2004 primary and general elections, and would have allowed the electors overseas and military personnel to vote entirely electronically via the Internet from anywhere in the world. It was expected that up to 100,000 votes would be cast electronically. However, SERVE was stopped in the spring of 2004 following a report by four members of a review group financed by the Department of Defense. They recommended that the development of SERVE be shut down immediately because they considered the Internet and the PC not to be sufficiently secure (Jefferson et al. 2004).
