Pencils, not pixels: Ireland scuttles electronic voting machines
DUBLIN, IRELAND 鈥� For sale: 7,500 electronic voting machines. Never used. Will need retrofit for security. Cost: $67 million, but all offers considered. Contact Irish government.
Bought in the midst of the booming Celtic Tiger economy, these Dutch-built Nedap Powervote system machines were technologically ch铆c. Piloted in three constituencies during the 2002 general election, they were expected to eliminate lengthy manual counts and parse votes from Ireland鈥檚 complicated proportional representation system to give instant results.
And if Ireland didn鈥檛 embrace e-voting, then Taoiseach [Prime Minister] Bertie Ahern in 2006, the country would be a laughing stock 鈥渨ith our stupid oul pencils,鈥� he said, using an Irish colloquialism for "old."
But the stupid oul pencils have had the last laugh. Ireland is now selling its unused machines, which thus far have incurred storage fees of 鈧�3.5 million [$4.6 million].
Although manual counting can be inaccurate (aim your mouse here for more on this idea), it doesn鈥檛 carry the same security concerns of electronics.
A report from Ireland鈥檚 , 鈥渇ound it very easy to bypass electronic security measures and gain complete control of the 'hardened PC,' overwrite the software, and thereby, in theory, to gain complete control over the count in a given constituency."
Similar concerns have surfaced in the and Europe. The Dutch government abandoned electronic voting after the anti e-voting group, [We don't trust voting computers] hacked into a machine on a television documentary (see ) and changed results.
Last month, two Germans - political scientist Joachim Wiesner and his son Ulrich 鈥� won a lawsuit in the German Constitutional Court, which ruled that the machines were . 鈥淓ven cell phones are better protected against manipulation," said Ulrich Wiesner in an with Der Spiegel.
The principal concern is that the Nedap machines don鈥檛 leave a paper-trail and, according to opponents, can display one vote .
The Irish government could retrofit the units with the paper-based VVAT - Voter Verifiable Audit Trail 鈥� but at a cost of up to 鈧�27 million [$36 million]. 鈥淭he financial and other resources that would be involved in modifying the machines ... could not be justified in present circumstances,鈥� John Gormley, Minister for the Environment.
