Geneva Vision on eVoting rewarded by the vote

The eVoting acceptance by the Geneva population rewards the vision of Geneva Government, WISeKey and its partners in developing secure technologies to facilitate the Citizen interaction with their governments.


This Sunday Citizens in Geneva voted in favor of the Geneva eVotiong project by an overwhelming 70 per cent. With this vote of confidence voters decided to enshrine electronic voting in the constitution making Geneva the first of Switzerland's 26 cantons to do so.

This project stated in March 2000, at that time the Cantonal executive (Conseil d'Etat) agreed on a proposal to implement e-voting within the subsequent three subsequent three years.

In the course of a public subscription in fall 2000, two private enterprises (Hewlett-Packard and WISekey SA) were selected for working out the design of the system and the adequate software requirements. At the same time, various experts from reputable local institutions (CERN, University, central hospital etc.) were chosen for studying various critical issues of e-voting procedures (e.g. problems of voter identification, security and confidentiality of votings etc.).
The e-voting system was introduced by the Chancellor of the State of Geneva in collaboration with two private companies located in Geneva, namely, Hewlett-Packard and WISeKey www.geneve.ch/evoting/english/doc/Presentation_generale_english_2006_2_web.pdf . This public-private sector partnership was needed in order to develop a solution compatible with the Swiss voting habits and legal constraints. WISeKey played a crucial role in security of the e-voting system in the State of Geneva. The objective was to guarantee the secrecy of voting and to make sure that votes are not intercepted, modified, nor diverted, and to ensure that many other conditions of secrecy were fulfilled, such as:

· ensuring that each voter can vote only once;

· restricting e-voting access to registered voters;

· allowing access to the system only during the voting period, from the official opening to the official closing of the e-Ballot box;

· ensuring that the ballot box can only be counted in the presence of the minimum quorum of electoral representatives;

· and many others.

WISekey has since this pilot project assisted many governments with their citizen to government applications with the development in cooperation with Microsoft of a Citizen Service Platform which includes evoting among of many other services provided to the citizens that via leading-edge identity federation that enables the establishment of customized citizen portals adapted to the needs and the interests of each citizen in a real Web 2.0 environment.

More information at:

http://www.geneve.ch/evoting/doc/rapports/rapport_version_internet.pdf



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