Electronic Voting in the German Social Insurance Elections

Vienna.
The next speaker at EDEM 2009 is Hans-Eberhard Urbaniak, the federal commissioner for the social insurance elections in Germany (and yes, I hope he explains to us what this may mean). In Germany, some 46 million are eligible to vote in the social insurance elections (including especially health and pensions insurance), and if I understand this right, the delegates elected through this process shape the social insurance services provided to the public; this is a matter of self-determination for the voters, and through the process, the overall range of social insurance services is determined. The overall budget for social insurance is some €420 billion, incidentally.

To date, these elections have been carried out entirely via postal vote; this is a problem, of course, since for most voters postal elections are normaly an exception from the rule. At the same time, postal votes are also becoming more common in the regular parliamentary elections. Postal elections are carried out using standard postal services; this introduces another element of uncertainty.

In recent times, voting participation has declined, and this is a sign that voter engagement in the social insurance process has reduced - even though insurance itself remains of paramount importance, of course, and there is much public debate around the level of social services provided to the public. So, there is a growing push towards exploring online election mechanisms - with all the attendant problems associated with online elections, of course. Currently, the federal mnistry for commerce is funding exploratory work in this context, and the lessons learnt are also going to be translated to state and federal parliamentary elections, of course.

On this basis, the establishment of online election mechanisms is now being pursued for the next few years; this also requires the appropriate legislative frameworks, of course, and an Election Services Bill is being developed. However, there have also been trials of electronic election machinery in recent parliamentary elections, and challenges to these systems have been successful in recent court cases as there is a lack of transparency to date - 'to date' is the operative term here, however, and there remains a possibility of more transparent election machines to be re-introduced in the future. Again, the social elections will be utilised as a test case for new electronic election systems (and Hans says that it would be 'a shame' for this technology not to be used, given how central electronic technologies have become for everyday life especially in younger generations).

So what needs to be done to make the electronic election process accountable and transparent? Voters come to the election with a PIN which is provided by their insurance provider; this is used to authenticate the voter, but beyond this the election process needs to take place in secrecy, of course, while also generating a confirmation to the voter that their vote has been received. The entire process needs to be able to be tracked and protected from manipulation, of course - a significant challenge. Any problems anywhere in the process would most likely lead to the annulment of the entire election, thus severely damaging the legitimacy of the election process overall. (The German Federal Constitutional Court, the Bundesverfassungsgericht, has already set a high level of standards which need to be met for a e-voting system to be acceptable.)

The social elections commission already had a trial system ready to go (for a trial outside of the main election process), but the service providers withdrew at the last minute, and there is great reluctance to use the main social insurance elections as a test case. So, the upcoming social insurance elections will take place using conventional postal voting mechanisms; the new target date for e-elections now is 2017... As always in politics, while the money has been committed to the project, the political will for its full implementation is still missing.

Technorati : EDEM 2009, Germany, e-voting, elections, participation, social insurance elections, transparency
Del.icio.us : EDEM 2009, Germany, e-voting, elections, participation, social insurance elections, transparency