7000 e-Voting Machines Now Deemed Worthless By Irish Government

First time accepted submitter lampsie writes "Despite spending at least 51 million euro over the last decade buying and storing 7000 e-voting machines from Dutch firm Nedap, the Irish Finance minister has announced that they are now 'worthless'. The machines were originally trialled in 2002 on three regional elections, but a nationwide rollout in 2004 was put on hold after a confidential report expressed serious concern over the security of the voting machines. According to the report, the integrity of the ballot could not be guaranteed with the equipment and controls used. Several years on, and tens of millions later, it looks like the pen and paper ballot will remain for now."

Comments

Wimps

[Bob9113]

"the Irish Finance minister has announced that they are now 'worthless'. ... after a confidential report expressed serious concern over the security of the voting machines. ... the integrity of the ballot could not be guaranteed"

Come on, Ireland, where's your sense of tenacity? On this side of the pond we have shown over and over again that voting machines are insecure -- we even had a CEO of one of the voting machine companies promise to deliver his home state of Ohio to to GWB, then had a precinct in Ohio that was using his machines report more votes in favor of GWB than the number of people in the precinct -- and we are still using them.

You can't let a little thing like "failing to provide an accurate and trustworthy tally of votes" keep you from insisting that voting machines provide an accurate and trustworthy tally of votes. There are corporate profits and lobbying money to consider. Are you going to ignore the will of the lobbyists who represent the voting machine companies just because they stand directly opposed to the best interests of the nation? You would not last a second in American politics.

Re:No solution selection?

[RafaelGCPP]

Being a brazilian myself, I have to assure you it's not the electronic booth only. The whole election process is audited from beginning to end, software source code is independently audited, compiled and the binary is signed, in a full day cerimony.

The software activates itself an hour before the elections begin, and it must be closed at most a couple of hours after the election ends, or the booth is invalidated. It stores only two information: if an registered elector voted, and the vote itself, but no link is made between information. Data itself is encrypted and only the Superior Electoral Court President Judge has the key, which is he/she hands off to the Regional Judges only after all booths are recovered to the regional courts.

The whole thing is very straightforward, but the process has many control points and locks, so it would require an army of fraudsters for the elections to be cheated.