Slashdot Mirror

You're right.
I was just about to correct my earlier post by posting a link to this document from the Irish Labour party.
Sorry everyone! Mod grandparent down.

E-voting in Ireland has caused much controversy in the last 6 months or so. The main objection to the system proposed for use in the European and local elections are that there is no paper trail for validation. The Irish Labour Party Published a report at the end of 2003 about the proposed system to be used in Ireland and the flaws in that system. All of the Irish political parties are for e-voting in principal; the main advantage from their point of view is that the long wait through numerous rounds of counts would be eliminated during the counting process. The long manual counting procedure is due the proportional representation voting system used in Ireland.

E-voting in Ireland has caused much controversy in the last 6 months or so. The main objection to the system proposed for use in the European and local elections are that there is no paper trail for validation. The Irish Labour Party Published a report at the end of 2003 about the proposed system to be used in Ireland and the flaws in that system. All of the Irish political parties are for e-voting in principal; the main advantage from their point of view is that the long wait through numerous rounds of counts would be eliminated during the counting process. The long manual counting procedure is due the proportional representation voting system used in Ireland.

Just saw this link on TV this evening. It's the "information" website about electronic voting - they've chosen to do this only now that it's already a fait accomplit.

Another link - the Irish Labour party's policy document on e-voting. Quite nicely sums up a lot of the worries about e-voting here.

Yep - here in Ireland we get our name ticked off against the register of voters when we go to vote.

Incidentally - the Irish govt. is bringing in electronic voting for the upcoming presidential and European Parliament elections. I'm not at all happy about it. No paper trail at all - we have to trust a closed system. How hard would it be to have a voter-verified paper copy which is put into a ballot box? Then in addition to checking manually any stations where there's suspicion of tampering, faulty software or a close result, random checks of voting stations could be carried out as Quality Control.

Check out the Irish Labour party's policy document on e-voting, it lists the main concerns and suggestions for the Irish system. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that the entire voting system for our country is being change by the leading coalition parties, not one opposition party supports the changes in their current form!

This is the good news of the day... http://www.online.ie/news/viewer.adp?article=%2030 46344
http://www.labour.ie/press/detail.tmpl?SKU=2003110 3143251

He's my local member of Parliament. A scarily smart and clued-up politician. They do exist. In Ireland, they're mostly in the opposition, but we live in hope...