In the municipal government elections last month, Finland tested a new e-voting system in three small cities. These cities were Kauniainen, my home town as well as Karkkila and Vihti. The system is expected to become implemented country wide in future elections.
Two days after the elections it was discovered that the system lost 2% of votes cast electronically. (Also reported by Slashdot and Helsingin Sanomat in Finnish). In my home town they lost 61 votes out of about 3000; the lost number of votes would have been sufficient to change the results or even get someone who otherwise had no votes to the city council.
Together with the Electronic Frontier Foundation Finland, some of the citizens of the three cities collected evidence of problems related to the voting machines. The goverment claimed that the cause of the problems was that the users did not know how to use the system. But we found out that there were far more serious problems. For instance, several voters experienced machines that got stuck during the voting process. We filed an appeal to the administrative courts on this issue.
But later in a surprise move, Finland's Minister of Justice Tuija Brax announced on December 10th that there were indeed serious problems in the voting. She has also fired her 2nd in command, the Director of Elections. There is no word yet on whether the elections will be re-run, but the minister is already planning how to arrange new elections if the courts so decide. We can only hope that the next Director of Elections remembers that closed source voting system implies job insecurity...
Despite all the above, the cities involved in the scandal claim that the voting citizens conspired to misuse the user interface in order to show that the system is unreliable. Here is what the cities of Karkkila and Kauniainen are writing in their official reply to the administrative court (translated):
"It is even possible that the voter aborted the voting process on purpose in order to prove that the system is unreliable."
Conspiracy! I am speechless. Usually it is the crazy citizens that suspect a government conspiracy, but now the roles are reversed! Needless to say, but this of course not true. Hundreds of voters did not conspire in secrecy. If they had, there'd be evidence. But now all the available evidence points to fatal flaws in the system, its architecture, testing practices, and user-interface design.
On January 29th, the administrative court agreed that there were problems in the voting process and machines. None of the serious issues were in dispute during the court proceedings. However, the court decided to NOT re-run the elections, and simply stated that 2% error rate is not a sufficient problem. However, the case will be brought to the highest court which will then make the final decision on the matter.
Created Nov 5th, 2008.
Last modified Feb 1st, 2009 by Jari Arkko