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Seeking The Source For Ireland's E-Voting System

Posted by timothy on from the secret-sauce dept.

WeeBull writes "Michael Cunningham from p45.net tried to request 'the source code of the electronic voting system first used in Ireland's May 2002 general election, plus any supporting technical documentation supplied to the Department of Environment and Local Government including the functional specifications' under Ireland's Freedom of Information legislation. The result wasn't what he expected ..."

4 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. Now that's creepy. by JanusFury · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They don't even have the source code to software they used to run their elections?

    Doesn't that mean that IF there was any fraud during the elections, that it is now impossible to prove whether or not it had to do with the software? Since the government doesn't have the actual code, any code they get from the authors in the future cannot be proven to be the code used in the election...

    What a mess.

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    1. Re:Now that's creepy. by afidel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While it can't be proven all one would need to do is ask for the compile options, compile it with the same compiler and then compare the compiled version to the one they have from the election (assuming that they do have a copy, which they possibly do not considering that it appears they merely use the machines from this election software firm.) I believe that like encryption election code is one area where full public disclosure is absolutly necessary to assure that they system is operating as expected. The fact that the election commision in Ireland handed the auditing over to a private company is sure lunacy.

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  2. Re:Wow.. this is unusual by TheToon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The voting system is the backbone of a democratic system. This is the number one indicator that a nation has taken the step forward and joined the democratic fold.

    It needs to be auditable. It needs to be verifyable. To the full extent.

    Look at the mess in Florida in the last US presidential elections. The system there worked as everything was on paper, so they just needed to go through all the ballot notes and re-count and re-evaluate them. After the extensive re-counts and press and public auditing of the result, it was found to be correct.

    How can you do that audit if you don't know the system? And the only way to know a computer based system is to have all the information about it available, including source code.

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  3. Re:Expectations by blibbleblobble · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why not, for the sake of simplicity, just take all the ballot-papers, ship them off to a company in the Netherlands, and they can phone us and tell us who won the election? Does anyone else see a problem with this method of vote-counting?

    Given that there is a problem with such a system, how about shipping all of the votes off to a secret black box designed and built by a company in the Netherlands, which phones up a central computer and tells us who won the election?

    There's a reason that votes are counted in public, and it's not just the entertainment value.