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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."
I've been an Elections Inspector in New York State since 2004. You are seriously underestimating the logistical difficulties in counting the votes by hand. My precinct has more than 800 registered voters in it. In the last two Presidential elections we've seen 65%+ turnout. The last two Gubernatorial elections both exceeded 50%. The polls are open from 6am to 9pm; we are mandated by law to be there 45 minutes before and after these times. There is no way that we can physically count hundreds of votes in 45 minutes. It would take several hours; now multiply this by our collective $41/hr salary ($11 for the chairman, $10 for each of the other three) and multiply that by the tens of thousands of election districts across New York State. Where is that money going to come from?
The current optical scanning technology is a fair balance. Paper ballots are retained for seven years after an election and are available for inspection by any interested party. The canvassing and certification process is watched by election officials from all major political parties, representatives of the candidates and the media. Elections officials count the votes by hand from randomly selected precincts the very the machine count. All the machines do is speed up the tabulation process.
You'll brook no argument from me on the downfalls of direct electronic record machines where no paper backup is available. Arguing that the election should be run on pen and paper is equally insane though. I can't think of any compelling reason to do so; it opens the door for arguments back and forth on "voter intent" (whereas the machine rejects ballots for ambiguous marks and gives the voter another chance), turns the process of canvassing the votes into a logistical headache and would cost a lot more money.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Exactly those machines (and others) were outlawed a few years ago by the dutch government, after years of protesting from the http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/ action group (translated: 'we don't trust voting machines'). In this action group were a couple of notable hackers and ICT experts - people with some authority when it comes to ICT, who argued that such a black box can not be trusted by the voter in any case.
Options like printing voting tickets - to get both of best worlds (fast counting and verifyable counting) were considered, but quickly dismissed as there was no ready available hardware.
So - luckily - we are now back to voting with paper and pencil. Not everyone is happy with that (because it's slightly more inconvenient - a rubbish statement if you ask me for something you'd do on average once every two years, and especially when you compare it to all other paperwork bureaucracy forces us too). Among the groups against are the more uneducated people (sorry for that statement), and an incidental parlementarian.
I'm glad to see brittain saw the flaws of electronic voting too. I can only hope other countries that still use electronic voting will see it too. If i'm not mistaken, USA has got it's scandals too when it comes to voting machines.
And in practice, voting on paper works out just fine. May take a day longer for the final count, but the newspapers won't complain because now they can bring the news again, instead of the television.
Our laws require voting technology that is accessible to the handicapped. The machines that we use here have headphones for the blind, foot pedals for paraplegics and a sip/puff device for quadriplegics. If you know a way to enable such people to independently vote without technology the New York State Board of Elections would be interested in hearing it.
And no, this still isn't "e-voting". The ballot marking portion of the machine is exactly that; it prints a paper ballot that matches the selections made by the voter via the handicapped interface. They or a trusted third party can verify this ballot before depositing it into the scanning side of the machine. We can verify it for them as Elections Inspectors provided that one from each party assists the voter (no ballot is ever handled without one Inspector from each party present). Other voters manually mark their ballots with a pen and then deposit it into the scanner. Every piece of paper from the ballots themselves to the poll books and even the notepads the Inspectors use is retained for seven years.
There's no conspiracy at play with optical scanning technology. I decided to become an Elections Inspector specifically so I could observe the process from the inside. Having done it for seven years I'm satisfied that our elections are fair and honest. I can't speak for the other States in the Union but I sleep quite well at night knowing that my vote was popularly counted here in New York.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
How many different selections were on your voting forms? Here in AZ, a typical election has dozens and dozens of different people and propositions to vote on; not only the big national candidates for Pres and Congress, but state and local candidates, and several dozen judges. Then there's usually a dozen propositions too.
I really don't think you'd hand-count 5000 votes here in 30 minutes in an accurate way.
I don't know about Irish elections but in Finland, the ballot is a folded piece of white cardboard with a large, friendly circle inside. That circle has a single number penciled in. Real quick to sort and count.
American ballots are of course the opposite extreme: literally dozens of multiple-choice questions on a legal-size, multiply folded sheet of cardboard, where your counting is distracted by the lengthy questions.
The American system is so democratic that it renders itself anti-democratic. It takes hours to do the necessary online research to make half-sane decisions on 10% of the questions on the ballot. "Do you agree that never-heard-of-before will be nominated District Jugdge blah blah." "Pick three of the following to be on the park district board." "Should the state borrow 4.37 billion dollars, of which 3.78 billion will go to road maintenance, 582 million will go to hospital emergency services and 8 million to the governor's children's college fund?" And: "By the way: who should be President of the United States of America?"