Slashdot Mirror

As well as being used in Holland and France, thousands of these NEDAP machines were bought by the Irish government with a view to replacing our paper election system with electronic voting. They had been used in a few pilot constituencies, and were due to be rolled out nationwide for the 2004 local and European elections. Luckily, determined lobbying by computer professionals (Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting) and others forced the Government to set up an independent Commission on Electronic Voting, who decided that they couldn't stand over the use of the machines without further testing.

Interestingly enough, these Dutch hackers used the First Report of the Commission on Electronic Voting to glean a lot of the technical details about the machines.

The most recent report of the Commission (July 2006) concluded that the machines needed some modification but were basically okay, but that the software used to manage an election was basically a joke and should be scrapped. The Government tried to use this as vindication of their actions in procuring the system, even though they had been perfectly willing to let a nationwide election go ahead with dodgy software.

Even that fig-leaf of respectibility has now been removed, and I expect that the Government will soon be moving the machines out of their costly storage facilities, and into the nearest recycling centre. As the Dutch hackers showed that they could be used to play chess, perhaps an amusement arcade will take them off their hands.

Lots of info at the Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting site linked above, including a discussion list archive which has covered every imaginable angle on E-Voting.

As well as being used in Holland and France, thousands of these NEDAP machines were bought by the Irish government with a view to replacing our paper election system with electronic voting. They had been used in a few pilot constituencies, and were due to be rolled out nationwide for the 2004 local and European elections. Luckily, determined lobbying by computer professionals (Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting) and others forced the Government to set up an independent Commission on Electronic Voting, who decided that they couldn't stand over the use of the machines without further testing.

Interestingly enough, these Dutch hackers used the First Report of the Commission on Electronic Voting to glean a lot of the technical details about the machines.

The most recent report of the Commission (July 2006) concluded that the machines needed some modification but were basically okay, but that the software used to manage an election was basically a joke and should be scrapped. The Government tried to use this as vindication of their actions in procuring the system, even though they had been perfectly willing to let a nationwide election go ahead with dodgy software.

Even that fig-leaf of respectibility has now been removed, and I expect that the Government will soon be moving the machines out of their costly storage facilities, and into the nearest recycling centre. As the Dutch hackers showed that they could be used to play chess, perhaps an amusement arcade will take them off their hands.

Lots of info at the Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting site linked above, including a discussion list archive which has covered every imaginable angle on E-Voting.

As well as being used in Holland and France, thousands of these NEDAP machines were bought by the Irish government with a view to replacing our paper election system with electronic voting. They had been used in a few pilot constituencies, and were due to be rolled out nationwide for the 2004 local and European elections. Luckily, determined lobbying by computer professionals (Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting) and others forced the Government to set up an independent Commission on Electronic Voting, who decided that they couldn't stand over the use of the machines without further testing.

Interestingly enough, these Dutch hackers used the First Report of the Commission on Electronic Voting to glean a lot of the technical details about the machines.

The most recent report of the Commission (July 2006) concluded that the machines needed some modification but were basically okay, but that the software used to manage an election was basically a joke and should be scrapped. The Government tried to use this as vindication of their actions in procuring the system, even though they had been perfectly willing to let a nationwide election go ahead with dodgy software.

Even that fig-leaf of respectibility has now been removed, and I expect that the Government will soon be moving the machines out of their costly storage facilities, and into the nearest recycling centre. As the Dutch hackers showed that they could be used to play chess, perhaps an amusement arcade will take them off their hands.

Lots of info at the Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting site linked above, including a discussion list archive which has covered every imaginable angle on E-Voting.

Here in Germany the voting process is 100% transparent.

During the last election a few weeks ago 2.100 out of 80.000 polling stations used computers.
Of course they had to use computers without paper trail, computers which an expert team of the irish election commission found to be unfit for use due to the usual issues (secret source code, no code audits etc.)

While small manipulations of the elections would have made no difference in the resulting big coalition, remember that the two parties of the big coalition were only some tenths of a percent from each other, so a few votes in the other direction and Schröder would have remained in Office.

I really doubt that there have been any manipulations (yet), but Germany is not safe from close calls where a smalll manipulation could make all the difference.

It may have gone "better" but from the MSN article:
the Indian machines are far from perfect. They don't provide a "paper trail," which some computer-voting experts consider essential.

A Verified Voter Audit Trail is essential in any democratic system.

This is one of the reasons the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting and Counting rejected the use of e-Voting at the recent European elections in Ireland despite the Government having spent in excess of €50m.

There were many public objections to the system.

• as the software version proposed for use at the forthcoming elections is not as yet finalised, it is impossible for anyone to certify its accuracy;
• the issues set out above in relation to the testing of the system make it impossible to determine its accuracy in the context of this report;
• certain of the tests performed at the request of the Commission identified an error in the count software which could lead to incorrect distributions of surpluses; there is a possibility that further testing will uncover further software errors;
• while eliminating the possibility of certain types of inadvertent voter error, the chosen system introduces the possibility of new types of error in the use by electors of the voting machine, particularly in the context of a number of simultaneous polls;
• there is a possibility of interference with the voting machine, ballot module and hardened PC:
  • in particular, experts retained by the Commission found it very easy to bypass electronic security measures and gain complete control of the "hardened" PC, overwrite the software, and thereby in theory to gain complete control over the count in a given constituency,
  • the examinations carried out by the Commission's experts suggests that these "hardened" PCs are the weakest link in the security of the proposed system and it is significant that there appears to have been no systematic testing and certification of the "hardening" of the PCs notwithstanding their susceptibility to either inadvertent error or deliberate manipulation by those with access to them;
• the system allows the inadvertent use of outdated versions of the software, as well as the overwriting of the software with replacement software;