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Those NEDAP computer are the same in use and contested in the Nederlands http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/Engli shWe Don't Trust Voting Computer.

Those are are the same computer aquired and never used due to public pressure by the Irish (see http://evoting.cs.may.ie/Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting).

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.

I wrote an essay on this topic, Academic Libraries in the Digital Age.

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.

. . . is that the people leading the call for paper trails or even just paper ballots are either computing professionals or extremely technically literate. It's an interesting situation when technological "progress" is opposed by the elite rather than the traditional Luddites or the masses.

Indeed. Sadly, it's only the computing professionals who seem to realise that using Open Source code on your voting machines achieves nothing.

Simply put, there's no guarantee that the Open code whose Source you're perusing is the same code that is being run on the voting machines on the day. Even if you log in and compile it yourself, how do you know to trust the compiler? The linker? The run-time loader?

Ken Thompson's paper from ACM '95 is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it.

This is why Voter Verified Paper Trails are so important. You need an indepdendent audit trail, verified by the voter when they're casting their vote, to ensure any glitches can be caught.

Irish ./ers should check out the ICTE site.

You do not need to create a unique random serial number on the paper audit trail. The preference expressed by the elector is already a rather good number that can be used as a sorting key.

Sorting the ballot by first preference is already the first step in any election with STV electoral system (what is used in Ireland). You just have to continue like that.

I would like to see how frequently does the removal of randomness change the result of the election before signing for a black box on a single argument.

In the cancelled attempt to do eVoting for European Election, the removal of the randomness was not even part of the plan.

You should rather look at Voter Verified Audit Trail and... quote: "Take a look at Fergal Daly and John Lambe's pages describing how VVAT might work in Ireland."

It's not that easy when you have tens of thousands of ballots.

Note that you shouldn't be able to identify the order in which votes were cast, so each vote should have a unique random serial on it - making the manual sort even more time consuming.

I agree with you though, it can be done. The main point however is that e-voting offers an opportunity to eliminate this randomness by counting all the next preference votes and distributing them fractionally. That for me is the main advantage which e-voting offers. Remember, the randomness is only there in the first place to make the manual count easier.

Incidentally, I was just looking over the request for tender from 2000, and noted that they anticipated a larger trial for the 2004 elections, and that a decision on full implemention would be taken at the end of 2004. Kind of implies they were trying to implement it before even *they* thought they should.

Proof of presence and intention applies more relevantly to internet voting. It is confusing how we like to use "e" to mean everything, anything.

And thanks for the Voter Verified Audit Trail (VVAT) pointer.

Wrong! How can you be so badly misinformed ?

Check out the ICTE for all you need to know.

One of the other great things they are doing here in Ireland with respect to this is changing the machines without testing! The trial that you mentioned was run on a Series 1 machine, but thanks to our system with large multiple seat constituencies (up to 5 seats) they are actually using the series 2 machine to which they have since decided to add the ability to spoil a vote! So all testing has been invalidated twice!

They are planning on a nationwide rollout which will involve the distribution of almost 7,000 voting machines in 267 local electoral areas. They are planning on using the machines in the June European and Local elections.

Now this being slashdot, I thought I should really give you all a few links to set you on your way (and even one which gets technical, to the level of analysing conforming to standard best coding practices and adherence to ANSI C):

• Press Release from 25th Feb confirming the government plans, and the establishment of a Commission to verify the "secrecy and accuracy" of the Nedap/Powervote system.
• Report done by a group oppossed to the current plans, analysing the requirements and the proposed system. Should include the lovely link to this 2002 report, obtained under the Freedom of Information act and found by google, which is the software test report on the system?
• Nice write up on the sort of rubbish being spouted about e-voting in Ireland.

One of the other great things they are doing here in Ireland with respect to this is changing the machines without testing! The trial that you mentioned was run on a Series 1 machine, but thanks to our system with large multiple seat constituencies (up to 5 seats) they are actually using the series 2 machine to which they have since decided to add the ability to spoil a vote! So all testing has been invalidated twice!

They are planning on a nationwide rollout which will involve the distribution of almost 7,000 voting machines in 267 local electoral areas. They are planning on using the machines in the June European and Local elections.

Now this being slashdot, I thought I should really give you all a few links to set you on your way (and even one which gets technical, to the level of analysing conforming to standard best coding practices and adherence to ANSI C):

• Press Release from 25th Feb confirming the government plans, and the establishment of a Commission to verify the "secrecy and accuracy" of the Nedap/Powervote system.
• Report done by a group oppossed to the current plans, analysing the requirements and the proposed system. Should include the lovely link to this 2002 report, obtained under the Freedom of Information act and found by google, which is the software test report on the system?
• Nice write up on the sort of rubbish being spouted about e-voting in Ireland.