Geneva Voters to Take a Practice Run for Internet Elections
E-democracy will get its first real test on the European continent as 16,000 university students in Geneva use the Internet to vote on whether to legalize abortion and on other issues on this Sunday's ballot.

As part of their direct democracy, the Swiss routinely vote as many as four times a year to decide a variety of social and political questions. However, decreasing voter turnout, locally and nationwide, prompted officials to start an electronic voting project last year to put voting methods in tune with technology.

"This is the first time we've tried this in a real situation," said Sonia Lardi, a spokeswoman for the online project. If the pilot works without any major technical glitches, officials hope to hold Europe's first binding vote over the Internet early next year.

The votes being cast electronically in the Geneva trial this weekend will not be included in the official tally.

Hewlett-Packard, whose European headquarters is in Geneva, provided a computer network server for the online voting trial, in which 16,000 students were allowed to vote over a two-week period that ended on Saturday. The results of the trial, Mr. Hensler said, will be announced in the next 10 days.

The students were issued special voting cards with unique PIN codes to prevent electoral fraud. Then, after students went to their voting sites — their own computers or computers at cybercafes, for example — they called up the program's Web site, which displayed an electronic copy of the conventional voting sheet.

Students then registered their voting-card code numbers, each good for one use only, and the date, Mr. Hensler explained. If the computer recognized it as a valid number, the student could vote and then complete the process by verifying personal data, like birth dates.

The entire process was monitored by two different Swiss firms under contract to the trial project.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/02/international/europe/02SWIS.html