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Review of the principle of election - Focusing on the Estonia e-voting case

선거의 원칙에 대한 재고찰 - 에스토니아 전자투표 사례를 중심으로

  • Received : 2022.09.07
  • Accepted : 2022.10.12
  • Published : 2022.12.31
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Abstract

The March 2022 presidential election held at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic drew flak for undermining the principle of universal suffrage by failing to guarantee properly the voting rights of confirmed and quarantined persons. Guaranteeing their voting rights requires thinking about e-voting that can fundamentally overcome the temporal and spatial limitations of current paper voting polling stations. The question is how to deal with the increased possibility of contradicting or violating the principles of equality and direct and secret suffrage due to the expansion of universal suffrage. In order to obtain implications for this, we looked at the case of Estonia, which has been holding 11 national elections without any problems since the introduction of e-voting in 2005. Estonia was successfully building trust in the system, government, and society through the institutionalization and routinization of the overall socio-technical system of e-voting, along with political and constitutional agreements on the principles of elections. Therefore, we should not only consider the possibility of e-voting in terms of technological development and level but also discuss the establishment of trust by mediating conflicts between election principles from a normative point of view to reach a social consensus.

코로나-19 팬데믹 정점에서 치러진 2022년 3월 대통령선거는 확진자와 격리자가 투표권을 제대로 보장하지 못해 보통선거의 원칙이 훼손되었다는 비판을 크게 받게 되었다. 따라서 이들의 투표권을 보장하기 위해서는 현행 종이투표 투표소 투표의 시공간적 제한을 근본적으로 뛰어넘을 수 있는 전자투표에 대한 고민이 필요하다. 문제는 보통선거권 확대로 평등·직접·비밀선거의 원칙과 충돌하거나 침해할 소지가 높아지는 점을 어떻게 해결해 나가느냐는 것이다. 이에 대한 시사점을 얻기 위해 2005년 전자투표를 도입한 이래 11번의 전국 선거를 별 탈 없이 진행하고 있는 에스토니아의 사례를 살펴보았다. 에스토니아는 선거의 원칙에 대한 정치적·헌법적 합의와 함께 전자투표 운영에 대한 사회-기술적 시스템 전반에 걸친 제도화 및 일상화를 통해 시스템, 정부, 사회에 대한 신뢰를 성공적으로 구축해왔다. 이에 우리도 기술적 발전과 수준에서 전자투표의 가능성만을 따져보는 것이 아니라 규범적인 관점에서 선거의 원칙 간의 갈등을 조정해 사회적 합의를 이끌어내는 신뢰 구축을 위한 논의가 선행되어야 할 것이다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This journal was supported by the NRF(National Research Foundation of Korea) Grant funded by the MOE(Ministry of Education)(NRF-2022-2022S1A8A1095111)

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