Today I got the information that I was nominated for the TOP 10 to change Internet and Politics in 2009.

Now you can vote for me at http://www.politicsonline.com/content/main/specialreports/2009/top10_2009/vote.asp

please do so, if you want to support my work!

Carl-Markus Piswanger wrote an interesting article in the Austrian magazine "Monitor" about elections in general and their electronic support. Read for yourself (PDF).

After 10 meetings with Deans and Student Council representatives in Linz, Vienna and Graz, it is about time to reconciliate some of those reactions.

Overall we see constructive reactions from the side of the universities deans/management bodies (who have to support the student council elections) and on the other hand very intense and in-depth discussions of the topic e-voting by the representatives of the student councils. Often we get answers like "we don't think anything will happen, but we don't trust the system, ...".

Back in 2000 I was on the other side, when we first discussed the introduction of e-voting for the student council with the ministry. I was then a member of the management body of the student council at Vienna University of Economics, and we thought that this voting channel provided the best solution to integrate students who couldn't participate in the student council elections otherwise.

Today I'm glad that the members of the student councils are very critical about electronic voting. It allows for a debate and a discourse on a level, which I haven't seen come quite close in other projects or countries where E-Voting was discussed.

While it is not always easy to provide answers to questions which have been answered by myself long before, it is clear that this discourse is crucial for a possible success of the project. It is important to hear, to discuss and also to address the issues raised by discussants who are not as confident as I was back in 2000 and still am that electronic voting via the Internet provides a lot of chances and provides value added to democracy in the end.

For me it is clear that this will be a though job. But I think that this project and especially the discourse about it will be so important for any further progress around forms of electronic support of elections in Austria - not only on the Student Council level but also for other pressure groups, company boards or even elections to political representative bodies.

I'm proud that I can be part of this process at this early stage!

This week is again a week full of traveling and presenting.

This Monday I was in Berlin and giving a lecture on how to observe Electronic Voting at the German ZIF. There a quite international crowd (with the majority out of Switzerland) was doing a course on long-term observation of elections and it was my third time that I was to Berlin this year. It's always great to work with Irene Eich and her team at the ZIF.

On Tuesday I was back to Vienna where I was involved again in talks with student councils on e-voting. It was great to have such an informed discourse and to talk about possibilities, threats and other issues around e-voting - I think these talks help to build trust and understanding for the issues on both sides.

On Wednesday it was time to travel to Madrid to the Forum on the Future of Democracy from the Council of Europe, where I talked on the current status of e-voting in Austria. Thomas Buchsbaum presented the CADHE working group on e-democracy. Peter Michael Ziegler, colleague of Richard Sietmann at heise.de, reported today on the forum.

Yesterday evening I flew to Frankfurt to come to today's CAST Forum on "Elektronische Wahlen und Wahlgeräte" which was organized by Melanie Volkamer. Here I gave an introduction to the possibílities of e-voting including a statement that at some point in time we will have a global citizenship where it will be up to the citizen to decide where to vote for - i.e. living on the Seychelles and to vote for the Austrian parliament. Richard Sietmann reported yesterday on it here.

Tomorrow my travel week will come to an end and I will finally come back to Vienna ... but it feels great to meet so different crowds of people during one week.

Today the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research (BMWF), the Chancellery (BKA), Ministry of Finance (BMF) and the Social Security Insurance (HVdSV) have started a joint project for the Austrian Students:





The aim of this project is to raise the awareness of the citizen card functionality of the e-card (the social security chipcard, which every insured Austrian citizen owns).

In the project 25 registration officers (=students) will try to activate the e-cards of as many students as possible so that they can use online services like

- apply for student support online
- make their tax report online
- receive information about social security
- etc.

The citizen card is also a pre-requisite for future e-voting in Austria (incl. the student union elections in May 2009 following Minister Hahn's plans).

This project is a long-awaited initiative to heighten the awareness around e-government applications amongst students. I'm sure it will be a success and will help as one brick stone to the final adoption of the citizen card!

The results are like a shock for me.

Austria's voters have voted for the past - spending billions of Euros with laws passed three days before the elections and as if no financial crisis has happened in the past weeks.

Any liberal and thoughtful politics has been voted out (the liberals, green party or the liberal part of the people's party). Much rather, populists like Faymann, Haider or Strache have won the elections. We will see how that will turn out, but I doubt it this election result was a vote for the liberal, positive, forward-thinking youth ...

There was a lot of stress while organising the 3rd EVOTE08 conference in August of this year.


The White Suit

However two days before the conference I noticed that I didn't like the suits anymore, which I brought with me.

So a second later I decided to buy a new suit at Sagmeister men's clothing store in Bregenz and found two great suits.

However they had to be adapted and it took till the next day in the afternoon.

Due to the stress on the day before the opening of the conference, I totally forgot to pick them up in time. I remembered 5mins after closing 18.00 what I was supposed to do.

However, it wouldn't be Marcella, our wonderful host at the castle, if shouldn't always find a way to solve the problem. So together with her colleague Manuela she found a way on Thursday morning to get ahold of the store manager via a friend of a colleague's wife :-)

Thanks to Daniel to drove to Bregenz to fetch the suits (thanks a thousand times again!) I could do my presentation as scheduled ...


The Grey Suit

Richard Sietman from the German c't magazine has - once again - done a great report about the situation of e-voting based on the presentations at the 3rd International Conference on Electronic Voting in Bregenz.

Read more here.

Anyone interested in watching the presentations in Bregenz I can only recommend to go to www.e-voting.cc/2008 .

Yesterday I heard a saying from Burgenland, which I want to share with you: "The first house you build is for your enemy. The second one is for your best friend. And finally the last one - yes the third - is the one for yourself to keep."

Last weekend on May 2nd Stephan and Sandra got married (no worries friends - the big party's coming up on May 31st!!!) - congratulations to the beautiful wedding couple!

Before the wedding:



And after:



What a beautiful couple, aren't they?

Thx to Andy and Michi for taking the pics :-)