This year, the conference focused on multiple aspects of e-voting, from legal and security issues to technological improvements and voter behaviour. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of e-governance, which would enable the society to receive services and participate in governmental processes remotely, thus reducing the negative implications shutting down services could have.

The main organiser of the conference is Prof Robert Krimmer, the ERA Chair Professor of E-governance at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. According to him, the potential of e-voting needs to be realised better: “It is now more than ever that we need to find ways to enhance our virtual collaborations with secure ways of holding secret, verifiable and accountable elections, even when not able to hold them in person.”

E-Vote-ID is a leading conference in the field, organised by the University of Tartu, in cooperation with Karlsruhe Institute for Technology and Tallinn University of Technology. Given the current pandemic, the conference was held online. The conference proceedings are published by Springer and will be accessible free of charge for a month if accessed through the E-Vote-ID page.

The full conference programme is available here: https://www.e-vote-id.org/

For more information, please contact Prof Robert Krimmer, ERA Chair of E-governance, robert.krimmer@ut.ee