Voting for change

The Casimir Pulaski Foundation, a pro-democracy non-governmental organization, is gathering signatures to petition the government to implement a law to allow people to vote over the internet. The foundation hopes to collect 100,000 e-signatures through its website, www.e-voting.pulaski.pl.

"We started immediately after the elections so we have time to convince the government to implement the law before the next election," said Zbigniew Pisarski, the president of the Casimir Pulaski Foundation.

"We decided to start the petition after we were flooded by requests from Poles living abroad for information about e-voting," he added. The President of the State Election Commission has also promised to ask to the Sejm to allow for voting by proxy, by mail, as well as via the internet.

E-voting has been implemented in countries such as Brazil, Canada, Germany, India, Romania, and Switzerland. Advocates say having e-voting in Poland would increase election turnout by making it easier for Poles abroad or living far away from their registered domicile to vote.

Critics say that few people actually make use of e-voting. They point out that in tech-savvy Estonia, only eight percent of the voters used e-voting in the 2007 national elections.

Among the critics is Internet Society Poland, which in October issued a statement on e-voting saying, "With e-voting, the reliability of the democratic process depends on a complicated computer system which only a small group of experts can inspect."