Estonia parliament authorizes Internet voting for upcoming local elections News
Estonia parliament authorizes Internet voting for upcoming local elections

[JURIST] A bill approved by Estonian lawmakers Thursday authorized Internet voting for local elections in the country's capital, Tallinn, scheduled for October. The bill, initiated by the Constitutional Affairs Committee [official website, in English] of the Riigikogu [official website, in English], Estonia's parliament, will require voters to have an electronic ID card, an ID-card reader, and Internet access. Estonia is said to have the most advanced IT infrastructure of all the former ex-Communist states in Eastern Europe. If Internet voting is successful during the Tallinn elections, the government will push to use it in the 2007 parliamentary elections. In the US, the Pentagon proposed allowing 100,000 miitary and overseas citizens to vote over the Internet in last year's November elections, but the initiative was met with harsh opposition from both Democrats and Republicans [JURIST report]. AP has more.