I've linked the babelfish translation of the article. It's a bit disjointed, but the core elements are there and understandable.

http://66.196.80.202/babelfish/translate_url_content?.intl=us&lp=de_en&trurl=htt p%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fnetzwelt%2Ftech%2F0%2C1518%2C610962%2C00.html

The take away here is that electronic voting violates the principle of transparency. It's simply not possible for an unaided human to follow a vote from the moment it is cast, through to the final tally.

It then is both a vote by proxy and a vote record not human verifiable through ordinary means, such as those we would use in a court room.

The vote by proxy bit is disturbing to me because we basically equate software code to law in that the machine will do what it's designers intended it to do, and that may or may not mirror the intent of the law. Also, the voter may not trust the machine as they have no way to understand what the result of the machine decision actually is.

The key point to understand here is the actual record of the vote cast is an electronic state. These states can change, and do not leave an enduring record of said change. The other key point to understand is that such a record can only be examined through enabling technology, thus forcing the user to trust the various creators of those technologies.

Some enabling technology is ok. A lens, for example, would be an acceptable enabling technology for reading very small vote records. The properties of the lens are well known, transparent and verifiable by all, unaided. Thus, the record of the vote examined can be trusted as we would trust a record we examined with our raw senses.

Also, interpretation in a court can proceed as it should, as all parties can examine the evidence without fear of their perception being manipulated. A trial surrounding such a vote record would then be fair.

All of those things depend on transparency, which is one of four key ideas necessary to realize a fair and trustworthy election.

Those are:

Oversight - The law must permit oversight of the entire process by the interested public. If we are to be bound by the results, we must trust those results.

Transparency - Necessary to realize oversight and preserve the chain of trust from voter intent to final tally. A vote that cannot be directly examined, is a vote that cannot by definition be trusted. (and I've detailed why in the bit above, as have the Germans)

Freedom - This is simply the right to vote or not as each voter sees fit.

Anonymonity - Is not personally identifying a vote. An excellent test for this is law that disallows votes that are somehow personally identifiable. Necessary to prevent collusion and coersion from impacting the election process, rendering it untrustworthy.

I'm glad to see this kind of decision being rendered. Hope it's a sign toward a movement that continues to strengthen the trust surrounding elections. Put into local context, the Minnesota election recount and legal deliberations would not be possible, nor trusted, if all the vote record was electronic.

Good on the courts of Germany for correctly asserting this problem with electronic voting.

I continue to follow this issue for the simple reason that we continue to experience close elections! Our democratic struggle to make decisions depends a lot on this process. Hobbling it so that close results are less clear, or so that court decisions, attorneys and dollars can trump the will of the people is unacceptable, no matter where any of us are politically.

Since 2000, there has been an escalation of court struggles over elections. There has also been an escalation in electronic votes that really don't work in court too! Both combined are an untrustworthy mess.

As an American, the ability to verify, question and examine the means and methods by which we are governed is a core right. Base stuff. Simple.

Where it's not present, both our history and our founding legal documents assert that it will be exploited to our mutual detriment.

So that's it. Just following my civics and thought I would share and entertain a bit of advocacy at the same time.

If you can't directly see the record of your vote, somebody else is voting for you. It's that simple!