Friday, October 14, 2005

Estonians Hold Election on the Internet

An AP newswire article by Jari Tanner, via Yahoo! News, reports that:

This tiny Baltic republic is breaking new ground in digital democracy. This week, the country nicknamed "e-Stonia" because of its tech-savvy population became the first country in the world to hold an election allowing voters nationwide to cast ballots over the Internet.

Less than 10,000 people, or 1 percent of registered voters, participated online in elections for mayors and city councils across the country, but officials hailed the experiment held Monday to Wednesday as a success.

"Everything has gone smoothly," said Tarvi Martens, a spokesman for the National Electoral Committee.

Thousands of people voted online in Democratic primaries in Arizona in 2000 and Michigan in 2004. The city of Geneva, Switzerland, has held several online referendums, the first in January 2003.

But Estonia is the first to allow voters nationwide to chose their representatives online, experts in Estonia and abroad said.

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