Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Finnish Court Dismisses E-Voting Result

Posted by kdawson on from the go-back-jack-do-it-again dept.

wizzor writes in with a follow-up on the Finnish municipal election in which 2% of the votes were lost by a defective e-voting system, and which the Helsinki Administrative Court had found acceptable. Now the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland has rejected the election results (original in Finnish; bad Google translation here) and ordered the election to be re-run. The submitter adds, "Apparently 98% of the votes isn't enough to determine how the remaining 2% voted, after all."

6 of 114 comments (clear)

  1. 2% were lost... by Mishotaki · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If 2% of the votes were lost, how many were incorrect or not registered properly? If the system can lose votes, it can very easily put them for the wrong person as well...

    1. Re:2% were lost... by caliburngreywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In the USA, there is often a dramatic difference between early morning voters (usually elderly or thos who work in schools) Mid-day voters (usually unemployed or work non-standard hours) and evening voters (usually work a regular day job) if the 2% was spread out evenly over space and time, representing a random sample, inference is acceptable, but if it represents, let's say, the several thousand factory workers who voted right after work in a district that is abuzz with fervor for a new labor-friendly candidate...yeah, you can't base that 2% of the other 98%

  2. how many coffin nails will it take? by mtrachtenberg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    E-voting has had more lives than a cat. It should be over, done, kaput. An experiment that failed.

  3. From EFFI by Razalhague · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's an article in non-google-translated English. Also contains some other links in English.

  4. Re:Banking doesn't usually require anonymity by Sheafification · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.

    There's no need to give up on secret voting to get this. Thanks to advances in cryptography we can have secret *and* verifiable ballots. An example implementation can be found at Helios voting. Also, check out a description of a paper based system: Scratch and Vote [PDF]

  5. Re:Banking doesn't usually require anonymity by GvG · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You could be forced by a third party to reveal how you voted (they would force you to give them your random characters and then they would be able to verify that you voted as you were told to.)