Towards European Standards on Electronic Voting

Michael Remmert is project manager of the project "Making democratic institutions work" in the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe has been working since 2002 on a set of European standards on the legal, operational and technical aspects of electronic voting. This keynote gives insights on the progress and the work done so far. The Council of Europe is a pan-European inter-governmental organisation with 45 member states, covering virtually the entire continent of Europe, thus representing 800 million Europeans. It seeks to develop common democratic and legal principles through standard setting and a culture of co-operation. With regard to new information and communication technologies, the Council of Europe has developed minimum standards in areas that are of concern to all member states, from cybercrime to data protection. It constantly highlights the importance of the human and democratic dimension of communication and promotes e-inclusion and the empowerment of citizens in a democratic information society in such a way as to take advantage of opportunities and prevent risks which may result from the new information and communication technologies. Against this background, the Council of Europe has set up a committee, which is currently preparing a set of European standards on the legal, operational and technical aspects of electronic voting (e-voting). After some exploratory work in 2002, the first meeting of the Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Group of Specialists on legal, operational and technical aspects of e-voting (IP1-S-EE) was held in February 2003. The Ad Hoc Group has been supported by two subgroups, one dealing with legal and operational aspects of e-voting, the other with technical aspects. Common standards on e-voting, reflecting and applying the principles of democratic elections and referendums to the specificities of e-voting, are key to guaranteeing the respect of all the principles of democratic elections and referendums when using evoting, and thus building trust and confidence in domestic e-voting schemes. The standards on e-voting are being prepared in such a way as to be accepted and applied by governments and industry alike. The Council of Europe is preparing standards at three levels: