Of course things can go wrong. But although the news article makes it seem like it is a new thing, the "digital government" has been around for more than 15 years. Some have tried to break in, some have tried (D)DoS attacks. People working with it already have experience with it. Although this is not a guarantee against idiots in charge, it certainly makes it less likely - experiences professionals are more likely to speak up before that. I don't think anybody has though of absolutely everything but at least so far it seems that they have thought of everything necessary. If something fundamental breaks or if found to be flawed, access to the systems can just be shut off. Paper and related procedures still exist and work, people just choose to use online services. It would make it more difficult and slow the country down but you don't have to report to the government every day anyway.

Estonia had the luck of having no legacy regulations and basically no huge legacy databases when we regained our independence after the Soviet occupation. Everything had to be built from the ground up so it was easy to use new technology and ambitious ideas.

No centralized data storage (each government body manages their own databases), so pretty much impossible to read about ALL private information being publicly available. Some, possible, but not ALL. Also, not much to do with this information as in Estonia you cannot steal someone's identity just by knowing some data about them. Identity codes (the closest thing to an SSN here) are public information and basically nobody validates identities without a valid ID card or passport (or another equivalent document). Maybe the most delicate piece of information could be medical records but... this digital service does not properly work because the doctors are too lazy to fill the forms (althought mandatory by law).

If a wide-scale denial of service occurs, most of your important paperwork can still be done using pen and paper. Although almost everybody uses e-services, there are still paper forms available and regulations for dealing with these. As there are hundreds of different digital government services, some of them have or have had minor issues at some point. In these cases, people just had to do it the old way, go to a government office and fill out their forms. So a DoS would be a huge inconvenience, the country would be slower than usual but would not shut down.

Estonia already had an election right after the first reports of this vulnerability. Currently, nothing is coming for the next two years so this is not the reason of the quick deployment.

Actually there were 620 electic cars registered in Estonia at the end of February, 2013. As there are 163 charging stations, this makes about 3,8 chargins stations per car.

If you cared if someone saw who you voted for, you can go to the booth. If someone forces you to vote, you can still go to the booth. Nobody is going to babysit you for several days while you can change your vote.

Using this analogy someone can bribe you to vote in a certain way when visiting the polling station, too.

It's not only that you can be forced to vote for someone specific - whenever the forcer leaves you can change your vote. They have to monitor your activities for several days, and all that trouble for one vote. That's just inefficient. It's easier and cheaper to bribe people.

I for one would probably not always vote if there were no e-voting option - too much trouble for almost nothing. Also, e-voting is more convenient for disabled people and people who travel a lot (you can cast your vote anywhere where there's a card-reader and internet.

One problem with Estonian e-voting is that there is no option to cast an empty vote (polling station has that option) so you have to choose someone if you want to vote but are too lazy to go outside.

e-voting ends before physical ballot. Sorry, forgot to mention it.

In Estonia people can change their vote after e-voting. If somebody made you vote for something they wanted, you can later re-vote electronically or physically. The latest vote counts.

For technical details, browse the Estonian National Electoral Committee's homepage.