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River J Krimmer LMFT
Living Evolution
Santa Cruz, California
https://livingevolution.org
Robert Krimmer, Professor of e-governance at Nurkse School; former senior advisor of new voting technologies at OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights*
Recent developments here in Estonia have raised questions over how to make sure that elections are held in a credible way. Here are some of the key universally accepted principles and requirements.
While elections are essentially the expression of the socio-political culture of a country and therefore naturally depend on the context in which they are held, a certain set of common standards has evolved over time. They are best described in the United Nations’ International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which came into force in 1976 and is binding to its subscribing states, including Estonia.
The ICCPR describes in its article 25 that elections should give
„Every citizen [...] the right and the opportunity [...]
a) To take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representatives;
b) To vote and to be elected at genuine periodic elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret ballot, guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the electors;
c) To have access, on general terms of equality, to public service in his country.“
These are often summarized as universal principles for elections namely that elections should be universal, direct, equal, free, secret and personal. But what does that mean in practical terms. Here the Venice Commission provides some further guidance in its Code of Good Practice in Electoral Matters.
In line with this document, credible elections need:
An impartial electoral management, ideally composed of a judge, as well as representatives of all parties running for an election;
Decisions by electoral management bodies should be by consensus or qualified majority;
Voting procedures need to be easy;
Counting needs to be transparent;
Allow for observers and observation of all steps of the process, including unimpeded access;
Allow for an effective system of appeal, with appeal procedure clearly laid out and with the appeal body to be able to decide about voting rights, outcome with the possibility to annul the elections;
In all cases an appeal to court must be possible.
Based of the practice of election observation, as described in OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights Handbook for Election Observation, one can even derive some more practical notions for good conduct of elections, i.e. making sure amongst others that at least:
Ballot boxes are empty before voting starts;
Ballot boxes being closed with tamper-proof seals;
Ballot boxes being semi-transparent to allow for observation of ballot stuffing or other malpractices influencing the election results;
Voting and counting procedures written down in detail in law, bylaw or regulations (including counting of empty ballots before opening ballot box, counting envelopes, counting number of ballots, distributing them by party, tabulating and seeing if the protocol reconciles, etc.);
Full accounted for protocols and minutes of procedures exist;
Every stakeholder is able to receive copies of the minutes and official protocols.
It is also obvious that not all elections have to fulfill the same requirements that we put forward to elections of members of parliament or municipal offices. However, in particular if dispute over election results exist, it deems useful to draw from (international) experience on how to avoid conflict by following these principles as closely as possible.
In order to maintain the credibility of an election and in consequence legitimacy of an elected official it deems useful to seek consensus about voting procedures and outcomes. In case of appeals and other forms of minority opinions, it is essential that they are dealt with in a professional and impartial manner.
If serious concerns about the validity of an election exist, an annulment and repetition of the process are ways to regain credibility and maintain legitimacy of the process.
* This article reflects the personal opinion of the Author.
Estonian e-residency and 10 million e-estonians – a technological, or a political project?
Robert Krimmer, Professor of e-governance @ Nurkse School
In spring of this year, Taavi Kotka, Deputy Secretary General – ICT at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for Estonia, promised that by 2025 there will be 10 million e-estonians, and today the law enabling this was passed by the Estonian Parliament. For a country the size of Estonia with its 1,4 million inhabitants, it is a very ambitious plan. Is it a true goal of technology policy, or a political project?
The beautiful life of a digital citizen in Estonia
When I came to Estonia the first time in 2005, the digital identity card in Estonia was still in its infancy. Nevertheless nearly 10,000 citizens used the card to vote digitally in the municipal elections that October. Over the years, the take-up of the digital ID has increased quite considerably – even to such a high extent that I don’t know any other place where the use of digital identification, authentication and signing contracts digitally has a such a widespread adoption by the general public. Just a few (off-regular-working-hours) evenings ago I signed the household insurance policy digitally and sent the document by e-mail to my agent. She replied half an hour later and said everything was in proper order (on a Sunday night ...).
This is what makes life – for a resident who considers him/herself a digital citizen – quite convenient. Similar to Estonia, there are other countries that are trying to do the same.
My home country Austria began the efforts introducing a digital ID, the so-called Bürgerkarte (citizen card), around the same time as Estonia. To date, the adoption has been lagging behind. Only since the introduction of the Handysignatur (mobile ID) has the adoption started to increase and it is starting to be used more frequently. But no way near is it possible to do the same things as in Estonia. There is for example the lack of support by Austrian banks – there are only two banks that support the digital ID and anyway it is so complicated that hardly anyone uses it. Also, nobody in Austria would think of the idea to sign any kind of contract digitally and send it by e-mail.
Is there a real demand for Estonian e-residency?
Thus, the immediate difference between e-stonia and other countries is that the digital signature has reached everyday life, it has passed the critical mass of people that use it in Estonia. But what to do, if you want to interact with other countries or if a non-Estonian resident wants to use Estonian e-government services? Then he/she has been so far out of luck because of the requirement of residency as a precondition for the Estonian digital identity.
Not so in Austria – from the early beginnings, the Austrian e-government concept has foreseen the possibility that anyone who has an (e-government) interest in using Austrian e-government solutions could apply for a digital ID.
This is changing now also in Estonia. The move by the Estonian government to allow for e-residency, means that basically anyone that wishes to do so, can get an Estonian digital ID card. He/she only has to come (for now) to Estonia once, give his/her fingerprints (for a background check) and pay 50 EUR.
Since the opening of a show-of-interest list, a high four-digit number of people have shown their interest for becoming an e-resident. But why? Most of them, I believe, are early-adopters, wanting to know how the cool Estonian digital ID card works or how cool it feels to have one. What will they be able to do with it? They will be able to use it in Estonia, but elsewhere only a little.
This might be changing as well, and not only because of Estonian policies or development of the Estonian e-residency concept and services. The EU commission has passed the Electronic Identification and Trusted Services Directive (eIDAS), which should allow the use of national ID cards also in other countries. The Stork project, for example, has been working on making the various European ID cards interoperable – as a result also the Estonian RIK centre of registers and information systems already accepts Portuguese, Finnish, Belgian and Lithuanian digital ID cards.
So why offer the e-residency then, if at some point one will be able to use the digital ID card from one’s home country with the e-government services in the other European countries?
The logic is probably to export the Estonian experience and market the country, as has been the case for most Estonian e-related initiatives and policies.
What will the future tell?
The “e-residency” that is available in Austria for nearly 10 years has not been used much, while I don’t have any official numbers, I am sure it is in the low thousands, even if that.
The costs that are involved with introducing such a service – for example, developing new procedures, background checks, etc. – might outweigh – as is often the case with public services (and why these services are public services in the first place) – the actual benefits for the affected, unless there is a complete different business model in mind.
Rather than servicing a need, the Estonian e-residency has to be seen as a tactical and political move to export Estonian knowledge and expertise, to put ‘Estonia’ on the map for European-wide digital ID services, and/or to kick-start the growth of the Estonian economy (as has been also mentioned by Taavi Kotka).
Whether following these goals will actually attract 10 million people to sign up for this service in the next 11 years is to be doubted, but only time will tell. Yet, all these goals require a different policy rhetoric and logic than currently presumed by e-enthusiasts – from reinventing Estonian state and public administration to reinventing Estonian economic policy as well.
