The Digital Voting Pen at the Hamburg Elections 2008: Electronic Voting Closest to Conventional Voting

Abstract

Due to recent changes of the election law of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, Germany, the counting of the votes at the next elections for the state parliament will be complicated and time consuming. To nevertheless enable the Election Supervisor to announce the preliminary results of the election on the evening of the Election Day the Parliament has chosen to make use of an electronic voting system, i.e. the Digital Voting Pen System (“Digitales Wahlstift-System” - DWS). The main reasons for favoring this electronic voting system have been its closeness to the conventional voting procedure and therefore its acceptance among the voters, its security, and its verifiability.