Today Estonia made history becoming the first country in the world to implement e-voting in a parliamentary election. this is history because even the most technologically advanced nations in the world haven’t accomplished this.(P.S. if you’re thinking the US is the most advanced think again, see “The information age is about to explode post”
Anyways back to Estonia if you’re not familiar with the country they are located in eastern Europe former USSR, right beside Latvia and Russia and right across the Baltic sea from Finland. They have come along way in the last decade and half since the Berlin wall came crashing down. This is what Wikipedia had to say about Estonia
“Human settlement in Estonia became possible 11,000–13,000 years ago, when the ice from the last glacial era melted away. The oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was located on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in southern Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating, it was settled around 11,000 years ago, at the beginning of the 9th millennium BC.”
Amazing 11,000 years ago, well what makes this so unique is that even older people who are not seen as technologically advanced are voting as well.
The system uses a card reader to validate the person voting, this is major progress, the reason why it hasn’t occurred in the west yet in my opinion is because people are so worried about people “hacking” these kind of technologies and somehow managing to “fix” the results.
The real issue is though not people messing with results but with people not wanting to make progress, that is the major issue that needs to be addressed in the coming decades in the west, and this is a topic i will be addressing more in upcoming posts.
Today we celebrate Estonia’s progress and wish them the best of luck in the future.