Comments on: E-stonia and M-voting http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/12/e-stonia-and-m-voting/ The inside track since 2003 Mon, 30 Jan 2012 00:10:08 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: Harold Vest http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/12/e-stonia-and-m-voting/comment-page-1/#comment-61687 Harold Vest Fri, 19 Dec 2008 19:53:03 +0000 http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=2983#comment-61687 Didn't the Estonians invent Skype as well? I went there once, very friendly people. Didn’t the Estonians invent Skype as well? I went there once, very friendly people.

]]> By: Praguetory http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/12/e-stonia-and-m-voting/comment-page-1/#comment-61588 Praguetory Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:40:43 +0000 http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=2983#comment-61588 Your government could do worse than take some advice from Mart Laar (Estonian visionary leader), but then again he's a fan of small government or starving the beast as he puts it. Your government could do worse than take some advice from Mart Laar (Estonian visionary leader), but then again he’s a fan of small government or starving the beast as he puts it.

]]> By: Greg http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2008/12/e-stonia-and-m-voting/comment-page-1/#comment-61477 Greg Sun, 14 Dec 2008 17:37:36 +0000 http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/?p=2983#comment-61477 The most important thing isn't the mechanism but the motivation - in the US elections, people of all ages queued for up to 4 hours to vote. It's no bad thing to use technology to make democracy easier - but it's not that important either. It's also critical to make sure that it actually works too - see http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/14/0251214&from=rss for an example of technology bugs causing lost votes. Of course, open source stuff is probably better on things like this, but usually loses out because it doesn't have such well paid salesmen, expensive lobbyists and the other necessaries for government contracts, but how we tackle that challenge is probably something for another discussion :) The most important thing isn’t the mechanism but the motivation – in the US elections, people of all ages queued for up to 4 hours to vote. It’s no bad thing to use technology to make democracy easier – but it’s not that important either.

It’s also critical to make sure that it actually works too – see http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/12/14/0251214&from=rss for an example of technology bugs causing lost votes. Of course, open source stuff is probably better on things like this, but usually loses out because it doesn’t have such well paid salesmen, expensive lobbyists and the other necessaries for government contracts, but how we tackle that challenge is probably something for another discussion :)

]]>