Patent on e-voter registration

[James Heald <j.heald@ucl.ac.uk>]

Interesting piece at Out-law,
http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?page_id=europeansoftwarepa1057238848&area=news

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"European software patent granted for e-voting; but Directive in turmoil"

[opening paragraphs on e-voting snipped]

On Monday, the European Parliament was due to vote on a software patents 
directive that promises to harmonise the rules for "computer-implemented 
inventions" throughout Europe. At the last minute, the vote was delayed 
until 1st September amid fears that there has been insufficient time for 
MEPs to consider the implications of the draft law.

Critics condemn the proposed law, saying it would stifle innovation.

The US has a famously liberal approach to the grant of patents for 
software and business methods. Europe is much more conservative, and 
many fear the consequences of taking the US direction – which they say 
is written into the draft legislation. Others say that the draft does 
not go far enough – that businesses are not afforded the right to 
patents which are needed to protect their R&D investments.

Meanwhile, VoteNow's European Patent has slipped through the hysteria, 
being granted for a "Method, Article and Apparatus for Registering 
Registrants, Such as Voter Registrants." It applies to 14 European 
countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Sweden.

The patent covers the secure registration and authentication of voters 
using the digital credentials common to public key cryptography 
infrastructures in conjunction with live ink signatures, and/or other 
acceptable authentication and eligibility data, to establish the 
identity and eligibility of a voter.

This process promotes the use of existing public key infrastructure to 
register voters for both poll site and remote electronic voting. The 
registration technology also makes allowances for election officials to 
issue digital credentials to voters where the use of a public key 
infrastructure may not be present or widespread in use.

By integrating public key cryptography technology into an electronic 
database of securely registered voters, the process allows for the 
authentication of digitally signed ballots submitted electronically by 
voters in the poll site or remotely.

The complete patent description and claims are available at
http://l2.espacenet.com/espacenet/viewer?PN=EP1224767&CY=ep&LG=en&DB=EPD

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So:
(i)  what was the technical problem ?
(ii) in an age where the management of public-key identification is an 
off-the-peg well-understood technology, what was the non-obvious 
inventive step in the solution ?