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Comment by antris | Hacker News Reader

Essentially, Estonia gives 44% influence of their country to a system that cannot be verified to have almost any relation to what people actually have voted for. The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on.

Rest in peace, democracy in Estonia.

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>The people have will just look at the results and have to think "well, I hope weren't hacked this time" and move on.

Well, no they the main proponents of e-voting figured a long time ago that it's easier to eliminate those concerns using propaganda. For example if you are against e-voting media will brand you as a backwards russkie who hates Estonia.

That's not true. Estonian Conservative National Party is against e-voting also and nobody is calling them "russkies".

I'm not a supporter of i-voting, but it is true that most of the "concerns" given are pure FUD/bullshit. Studies that consider guest WiFi password being vital information, studies that collate e-voting and i-voting and a lot of other shit I can't recall at the moment.

But the very basic problems are not talked about, namely: * Votes should be counted by independent parties while preserving anonymity * Certificate issuance should be actually monitored by CT logs, every vote that is not in a CT log is dismissed and logged * Voting code should be actually readable and audited (only opsec has been audited so far)

There are a few other problems but I've forgotten them for the time being. These are the problems we should be talking about, not some bogus like, "Omg how can ten grannies vote quickly online".

As if they had one - https://www.osce.org/odihr/341596?download=true

That's some nice Russian propaganda you have there. With some pretty serious factual mistakes. It claims that non-citizens can't vote in local government elections, but this is false. Citizenship isn't a requirement to vote in local elections.

> former USSR citizens who lived in Latvia and Estonia and were deprived of the right to receive its citizenship after the collapse of the USSR

What right? Merely living in Estonia doesn't give you any right to citizenship. What's more, it's not that difficult to get citizenship. The main obstacle is learning the local language, as that's part of the test to gain citizenship. All these non-citizens refuse to do so. They take pride in being Russian and speaking Russian. They are openly talking about how great Russia is and how they are waiting for Russia to unite them with the motherland.

Estonia gained independence in 1918. Just because USSR occupied us [1] and transported a bunch of people here doesn't give them any rights to citizenship. The Russian population in Estonia grew from about 23,000 people in 1945 to 475,000 in 1991. [2] Now making up for a whopping 30% of the whole population! This is due to systematic transporation of people as part of Russification [3] where the Russians attempt to eradicate native cultures.

After the collapse of USSR it was possible for them to go back to Russia and/or get a Russian citizenship. Some did that, but all of these non-citizens still left are people who decided that life with fewer rights than citizens in Estonia is better than becoming a Russian citizen and living in Russia.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_the_Baltic_state...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_in_Estonia

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification

While the situation in ex-USSR republics is complicated, it is not a good idea to force someone to learn and use some other language.

Certainly and nobody is being forced to learn languages in Estonia, as being an Estonian citizen isn't a requirement to live in Estonia. What's more, citizenships often come with language requirements when we're talking naturalization. Indeed you need to speak Russian to get a Russian citizenship via naturalization. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_of_Russia#Citizens...

It is no better or worse than electronic voting machines in Georgia.

Online voting in elections has been around since 2005 in Estonia. I think you're making it seem worse than it is. On the other hand, I wish Estonia did not have online voting as well. There are some attack vectors you can't defend against.

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