A Critical Analysis of the
Council of Europe Recommendations on e-voting

Margaret McGaley and J. Paul Gibson

Computer Science Department, NUI Maynooth, Ireland
{mmcgaley,pgibson}cs.nuim.ie

Abstract

In September 2004, the Council of Europe's Committee of Ministers officially adopted a set of standards recommended by the Multidisciplinary Ad Hoc Group of Specialists on legal, operational and technical standards for e-enabled voting [7].

This paper puts the standards in their historical context, examines them according to established software engineering principles, and finally suggests how they could be restructured.

• Introduction
  • Council of Europe
  • The Standards
  • Further analysis of standards - motivation
  • Structure of paper
  
  
• E-voting: the European context
  • Past, present and future
  • Problems: public perception, government communication and reality
  • Europe and America: contrasting approaches
  • CoE Recommendations: lack of ambition
  
  
• CoE Recommendations: an ambitious proposal
  • Standards, Analysis and Requirements Capture
  • Public and Trust
  • Governments and Procurement
  • International Standards and Independent Testing
  • Manufacturers and Design Decisions
  
  
• A Software Engineer's View
  • Consistency
  • Completeness and Scope
  • Over Specification -- too concrete
  • Under Specification -- too abstract
  • Redundancy and Repetition
  • Maintainability and Extensibility
  
  
• Proposal for restructuring
  • Universal suffrage
  • Equal suffrage
  • Free suffrage
  • Secret suffrage
  • Direct suffrage
  • Voter assurance
  
  
• Analysis of restructuring
  • Split
  • Merged
  • Rephrased
  • Contradicted
  • Added
  • Not included
  
  
• Conclusions
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography
• About this document ...