PhD Studentship in Representation and Democracy Studies

Department of Government - University of Strathclyde (Glasgow)

Applications are invited for a PhD Studentship in the Department of Government. Candidates should have a particular interest in conducting research that examines aspects of political and legislative representation, either from an institutional or behavioural perspective. Topics may seek to further the existing research on legislative representation or may seek to compare ‘traditional' models of political representation with alternative models such as direct, deliberative or participatory democracy. The successful candidate may be affiliated with the Department's new Centre for Elections and Representation Studies which is to be launched in 2008.
Applicants should provide a thesis proposal (not to exceed 2,000 words) in which they identify an original research topic, place the topic within the existing literature and present a clearly articulated research design. Candidates with an interest in quantitative research and analysis are especially encouraged to apply though proposals drawing on qualitative approaches will also be considered. While research topics focusing on single country studies will be considered, proposals that include a comparative component would be particularly welcome.
The PhD studentship in Representation and Democracy Studies is available from September 2008 for three years, subject to satisfactory progress, and covers tuition fees at the UK/EU rate and an annual bursary of £10,000.
Along with the thesis proposal applicants should also provide a full curriculum vitae, and the names and addresses (including email) of two academic referees.
Application closing date: 4 August 2008
For further information see:

http://www.strath.ac.uk/government/postgraduatestudents/phdstudentships20089/.

ICDS 2009

============== ICDS 2009 Call for Papers ===============
CALL FOR PAPERS, TUTORIALS, PANELS
ICDS 2009, The Third International Conference on Digital Society

February 1-6, 2009 - Cancun, Mexico
General page: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/ICDS09.html
Call for Papers: http://www.iaria.org/conferences2009/CfPICDS09.html
Submission deadline: September 1, 2008
Submissions will be peer-reviewed, published by IEEE CPS, posted in IEEE Digital Library, and indexed with the major indexes.
Extended versions of selected papers will be published in IARIA Journals: http://www.iariajournals.org
Please note the Poster Forum special submission with on progress and challenging ideas.

ICDS 2009 Special Areas (details in the CfP on site):

Citizen-centric disruptive and enabling technologies
Internet and Web services
eGovernment services in the context of digital society (includes e-voting)
eCommerce and eBusiness
Consumer-oriented devices and services
Intelligent computation
Networking and telecommunications
eDefense for security and protection
Enforced citizen-centric paradigms
Management and control
Digital analysis and processing
Mobile devices and biotechnologies
Software and system robustness for digital society
Consumer-oriented digital design
Social networking
ICT support and applications for eCollaboration

Panel proposal for ECPR'09 (Postdam)

Hi,

I'm preparing a Panel Proposal to be accepted for the Joint Sessions of the European Consortium for Political Research - (september - 2009) in Postdam. The Panel I'm planning is

"The last electoral challenge: e-voting. A compared analysis".

Initially I'm expected to sent about 5 tentative papers, assuming that all tentative paper givers will come to Postdam. No matter if your institution is or not an ECPR member.

I'd like as well to know somebody to act as a Panel Discussant, and if you're also interested in co-chairing the Papel please let me know.

I'll wait until the end of July to send our petition. Feel free to contact me at: jreniu@ub.edu

Some changes...

Dear colleagues & friends,

As you surely saw our blog just changed its name and justification. To be sincere we must recognize that we placed really very few posts regarding e-democracy, in relation to the ones focusing on e-voting. In fact our academic focus is on e-voting (from a sociopolitical approach in my case and from a legal one in Barrat's jobs), so it had no sense to keep a so generalist definition of the blog.

Apart of that I also changed the justification, moving to one question a friend of us (Carlos González) used: "e-voting evangelists". Assuming that we're not fully in favor of e-voting (that's to say, "yes but with garantees"...) in fact what we do is to explore e-voting and to share with others our knowledge. Usually we have to deal with people radically against e-voting, normally without enough information, so in these situations we really start feeling some kind of "evangelist" mission.

Obviuosly it's just a funny question, not to mention that is already known our critical positions regarding the implementation of e-voting solutions, but we love to keep us placed between both general positions: in favor and againts e-voting.

VI Votobit - Buenos Aires

Unas pequeñas instantáneas del evento realizado en Buenos Aires, en el que los contenidos y los debates fueron del más alto nivel. Arriba la pancarta de bienvenida al evento en el Centro de Exposiciones de Buenos Aires, y abajo el acto de inauguración con el Ministro de Seguridad (derecha), el Jefe de Gobierno de Buenos Aires (centro) y un servidor (izquierda).
La conferencia inaugural, de Lawrence Norden, fue uno de los momentos más interesantes, en el que como puede verse estuvo seguido por un numeroso público, formado por legisladores, académicos y público en general.

Belgian Parliamentary Debate

Tomorrow the Belgian Parliament will start the debate on the future of its e-voting system. After a report developed by an academic consortium and other inputs, like the report of the Council of Europe, the Parliament has to decide whether to upgrade the current system or to implement another one.

VI Votobit

Next week (thursday and friday) Buenos Aires will host the VI edition of the VOTOBIT, our International Meeting about Electronic Voting. The Votobits have been done in Spain for three times (León 2002 & 2003, Tarragona, 2007) and twice in Mexico (Torreón, 2005 & Monterrey, 2007).

This time we count with the great cooperation from the local authorities of Buenos Aires, and the event will follow our traditional multidimensional approach: sociopolitical, legal and technical. The speakers include Lawrence Norden (Brennan Center at the NYU, USA), Mario Torre (GST, Venezuela), Maria Inés Tula (Conicet, Argentina), Alejandro González (IEPCC, Mexico), as well as different top level argentinian politicians and public servants who will discuss the pros & cons of e-voting.

Obviously we'd like to invite all of you (no fees), to share your knowledge and opinions with us in Buenos Aires.

E-elección a Rector de la UPV/EHU

Las elecciones a Rector de la Universidad del País Vasco empleando el sistema Demotek se celebrarán en una sola vuelta al concurrir únicamente un candidato. La elección se realizará en los Campus de Araba-Alava, Bizkaia y Gipuzkoa por sufragio universal y voto ponderado con un censo de cerca de 55.000 electores distribuidos en cuatro Sectores universitarios: SA (Profesores-Doctores Permanentes), SB (Otro personal docente), SC (Estudiates) y SD (Personal de Administración y Servicios).
La votación electrónica tendrá lugar el 22 de mayo en 38 Colegios y 73 Mesas electorales que requerirá el uso de 96 urnas electrónicas y la confección de 350.000 papeletas.

E-voting: the last electoral revolution (Just published!)

We're glad to present you our new (just published!) collective book:
E-voting: the last electoral revolution. Barcelona, ICPS, 2008. ISBN: 978-84-608-0728-5.

The book is the result of an International Workshop held in Barcelona last year and sponsored jointly by our research project and the ICPS.

Table of contents:

1. The development of remote electronic voting in Europe, by R. Krimmer
2. There is more to e- than meets the eye: towards automated voting in Italy, by L. Caporusso
3. Legal and political aspects of the Internet voting: Estonian case, by U. Madise
4. First steps in the regulation of Internet voting in French electoral legislation, by R. Fernández & E. González
5. Electronic voting certification procedures. Who should carry out the technical analysis?, by J. Barrat
6. Auditing e-voting pilot processes and systems at the elections for the European Parliament and for the Portuguese Parliament, by J. Falcao et al.
7. Is electronic voting functional?, by M.A. Presno
8. Doubts and certainties about electronic voting, by J.M. Reniu

To get a copy please contact the ICPS publications service HERE.

Spanish New eVoting Platform

P.I.V.E. (Plataforma Individual de Voto Electrónico) is the name of this new e-voting platform developed by the Spanish Ministry of Interior. After some pilots in 2004 and 2005, the Spanish government seemed to stop its e-voting projects and there have been no pilots during the last electoral period one month ago, but actually an internal task force has been analyzing the feasibilty of e-voting solutions. The last TECNIMAP Conference included the presentation of its report (paper).

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