Tallinn holds world's first online parliamentary election

Further exhibiting their embrace of technology since coming out from under the red carpet of the Soviet Union, Estonia will hold the world's first parliamentary 'e-lection' this week. Voters will be able to cast their vote electronically over the internet until Wednesday, after which there will be the typial trudging through snow and sub-zero temperatures to the ballot booths on Sunday, March 4th.

In response (to rather silly, we'd say) criticism that e-voters may face extra pressure at the workplace or at home while casting their vote, Estonia's 940,000 eligible voters can actually override their online votes by filling out a paper ballot on Sunday if they change their minds.

The electronic voting system has been tested extensively and was actually used to great effect in local elections in 2005, however this will the the first time a binding vote for a national parliamentary election will take place over the Internet anywhere in the world. A final test-run of the system was cutely carried out earlier this week when voters were asked to vote for "King of the Forest," choosing from such candidates as moose, deer, and boar. The results of this initial election have been thus-far withheld from the public pending the outcome of an investigation into potential ballot-tampering by a pod of Finnish porpoises working for a web-design company that used to be owned by Mr. Boar...