 The
EU Student Vote ProjectThe
EU Student Vote (EUSV) takes place from May 9-23 2002. It will elect
the first European Student Council. Students currently living in a EU member
country are eligible to vote. This means that foreign students who are
presently enrolled at EU universities are also allowed to participate in
the election. Students need to have a valid EU student card for higher
education in order to register to vote. Once voters are registered, they
receive a personal identification code and a password, which they need
to use when they vote. This information is sent to them via e-mail. These
security measures are meant to ensure that only eligible voters will have
access to the election web site (EU Student Vote Project 2002).
The EU Student Vote
Project came into existence in October 2000 at the “NEWEUROPEANS 2000”
Congress in Paris. The project is firstly meant to work towards the improvement
of the EU in the future. It aims at involving students in the shaping
of the future of the EU. Secondly, the project is also interested in finding
out how important information technology (IT) is, and can become in this
process. Thirdly the project is addressing the issue of education, since
this is a key issue in the EU. In sum, the projects main targeted areas
are the future of the EU, student involvement and education. (EUSV Project,
2002) The President of the
EU Student Vote Franck Biancheri stresses that the EUSV is meant to be
a test (Biancheri, 2000). The reason why it is the first Internet voting
election in the EU is that students make up the community of people who
have the highest percent of Internet access in the EU. Obviously it would
not be useful to hold Internet voting elections in communities that are
not enjoying high Internet access (EUSV, 2002) The main goal
of the EUSV project is to increase democratization in the EU. The EU presently
suffers from a huge democratic deficit. Needless to say this affects the
legitimacy of the organization. The EUSV is highly interesting because
it seeks to use information technology in order to create a new democratic
forum and a new community of European students. As such it should
be considered an e-democracy project (EUSV, 2002) At this point it is
not possible to evaluate the results of the EUSV. It certainly seems promising
as it is using information technology to fill a void where there formerly
was no democracy at all. However, a few cautionary remarks are still in
order. Firstly, voter turnout is absolutely crucial. If very few students
vote, the Student Council will not be able to insert very much influence.
In other words, if voter turn out is extremely low the Council’s legitimacy
will obviously be questioned right from the start. Therefore the EUSV,
in my view, is also a test of how “European” students in the EU really
feel, and how important this identity is to them. Moreover, the voter turnout
in national student elections within the EU is very low. It remains to
be seen if Internet voting will or will not have an effect on voter turnout. Moreover, while the
personal identification codes and the passwords are necessary security
precautions, it can be questioned how safe it is to reveal this information
to voters via e-mail. On the other hand, it should be noted that the stakes
are not very high in this election, and it is quite unlikely that the election
will be hacked or tampered with by outsiders. In sum, the EUSV is a promising
project, which actively seeks to address the democratic deficit in the
EU through the use of information technology. |
