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Electronic Voting
- an update
The Commission on Electronic Voting, established by the
government in response to criticism of the proposed Nedap/Powervote electronic voting system,
published its report earlier this month.
The Commission stated that it had "not been able to satisfy itself sufficiently as
to the accuracy and secrecy of the chosen system".
The government had planned that the European and Local elections and
the citizenship referendum, due to be held simultaneously next month,
would be conducted entirely through electronic voting.
The Commission's report has forced them to abandon this plan and
all voting will now be conducted using the traditional paper ballot system.
One of the issues identified by the Commission is that the there was an error in
the count software, which could have lead to the incorrect distribution of surpluses.
This issue is all the more serious because the government was planning to keep the
actual votes cast secret. This means that it would not have been possible for the
candidates or their agents to check that the votes had been counted properly.
Had the elections taken place using electronic voting, the system
would have failed secretly and silently, electing the wrong candidates, and no-one
would have been any the wiser.
The arrogance and incompetence of the government and the Dept. of the Environment
brought us to within six weeks of corrupting the voting system. The
democratic process was never in such danger when Charles Haughey was Taoiseach and
Ray Burke was Environment minister.
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