Electronic Voting

arcadegame2004

I support this change on convenience and immediate notification of results grounds. What do other people think?

arcadegame2004

Oops spelt Electronic as "electornic". Could someone fix that please. Thanks.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

star gazer

The primary problem with the system being brought in when compared to the old, trusted system is that it doesn't have a tangible paper trail. We have to trust that the numerous problems that can happen with the introduction of a substantial new piece of technology won't happen and if they do, they will be detected. Without the paper trail it will not be possible to detect certain types of errors and the voter will not be able to know that what the computer displays is what the computer records and that the count is flawless. The randomisation element of the old system in the distribution of transfers will be retained even though it would have been possible to take out the random element in the count.

All in all it would be preferable that the government added a VVAT paper trail and electronic voting shouldn't go ahead without it.

arcadegame2004

But do you know of a single E-voting country that has a paper-trail? I feel that having one would erode some of the benefits of E-Voting by resurrected the endless recounts of our current system which many find incredibly boring.

_blank_

How ironic that I voted in a poll on Electronic Voting electronically.

edit:/typo

chewy

the moderater could change the result, he may have no reason to but we would never be able to tell ...

Victor

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
immediate notification of results grounds.

But the minister, in his implementation, wants to delay notification, in case the government gets the same shock Nora Owen did.

chewy

of the poll
results above?

oscarBravo

Originally posted by chewy
[surprised] of the poll
results above?

They don't really mean anything. Of the people who answered "yes," how many are happy with the proposed implementation of electronic voting?

I didn't vote in the poll because of this ambiguity. I have no problem with electronic voting being used, but I have deep reservations about the system that is planned for use in June.

star gazer

originally posted by arcadegame2004
But do you know of a single E-voting country that has a paper-trail?

So you are saying we should follow the pack rather than trying to get the most up-to-date technology? Transparency and trust are key to the development of any new system, the VVAT (voter verified audit trail) would do that.

I feel that having one would erode some of the benefits of E-Voting by resurrected the endless recounts of our current system which many find incredibly boring.

There wouldn't need to be endless recounts, there wouldn't be any debate over whether a vote was spoilt or not so the fluctuation in votes should be non existent. Hence you wouldn't get the endless recounts.

bonkey

Originally posted by oscarBravo
They don't really mean anything.

Course they don't.

For a start, how does anyone (barring the admins) know that they haven't been modified by moderators like me?

jc

Villain

Originally posted by bonkey
Course they don't.

For a start, how does anyone (barring the admins) know that they haven't been modified by moderators like me?

jc

Seems like a very high number of votes

Anyway was this thread meant to discuss it's introduction altogether or just it's timing?

I think it's bad timing especailly given the added vote of the Referendum now.

star gazer

originally posted by irish1
I think it's bad timing especailly given the added vote of the Referendum now

tbh i don't think timing is that much of an issue, but i agree that having at least three if not four different votes on at the one time in the systems first nationwide test isn't going to make the roll out any easier. There will probably have to be a lot of extra work adapting the software to incorporate the referendum and really most of the development issues for the system should be sorted by now.

The big problem is that there will be no Voter Verified Audit Trail to make sure that any problems that occur aren't going to taint the result.

ishmael whale

This is the second thing she's said today that I agree with (the other being on the citizenship referendum thread.) Is she getting smarter or am I getting dumber?

http://www.breakingnews.ie/2004/04/16/story143157.html

Tánaiste ‘has personal preference for manual voting’
16/04/2004 - 12:56:32 PM

The Tánaiste, Mary Harney, has revealed that she has a personal preference for the manual voting system that is due to be replaced by electronic machines in the local and European elections in June.

However, in a radio interview this morning, Ms Harney also said she would support the Government’s decision to introduce the electronic system and believed the system could be trusted.

"I have a personal bias for the old system, slow and methodical as it was," she said.

"I think the instant result is maybe something I’m not ready for as a candidate, believe it or not, and certainly those that are pundits and like to do the tally are really disappointed. Although I like to think I’m progressive and modern, I’m not so certain I would have put this top of my priorities."

star gazer

mary harney
However, in a radio interview this morning, Ms Harney also said she would support the Government’s decision to introduce the electronic system and believed the system could be trusted.

i guess she has gotten over her problems with ex PD minister Martin Cullen as i presume it is his word she is trusting about the system. She clearly understands the old system can she not see how beneficial the Voter Verified Audit Trail (paper trail) would have been in securing the same level of trust as was in the old system?

dahamsta

I think it's a very clever ploy meself. She's putting her objections on a personal front while effectively backing it on a political level. She's just slipping her support in the back door. Cute.

adam

ecksor

Originally posted by star gazer
i guess she has gotten over her problems with ex PD minister Martin Cullen as i presume it is his word she is trusting about the system. She clearly understands the old system can she not see how beneficial the Voter Verified Audit Trail (paper trail) would have been in securing the same level of trust as was in the old system?

In all fairness, as much as I welcome the comments from her it could just as easily be seen as a way to undermine Martin Cullen without actually coming out against the government.

star gazer

originally posted by ecksor
In all fairness, as much as I welcome the comments from her it could just as easily be seen as a way to undermine Martin Cullen without actually coming out against the government.

yes it could be. It is an interesting indirectly related issue.

It is a pity that nobody else in the cabinet seems to be in any way conciliatory and understanding of other points of view. Maybe there are but i haven't heard them.

gandalf

Actually I added 100 votes to the Yes column to see if anyone would twig it. Surprisingly only a couple seem to have and the majority just seemed to have accepted it.

I have now amended the poll so its correct. Remember its all one "0's" and "1's".

Gandalf.

ecksor

Lies, gandalf removed genuine yes votes and is using this story to cover his tracks.

Villain

Originally posted by gandalf
Actually I added 100 votes to the Yes column to see if anyone would twig it. Surprisingly only a couple seem to have and the majority just seemed to have accepted it.

I have now amended the poll so its correct. Remember its all one "0's" and "1's".

Gandalf.

Guessed as much, you naugthy boy

only buzzing

gandalf

Well it just goes to prove how easy it is to change the values in a SQL Database or an Access Database and without a verified audit trail people are none the wiser.

What is also interesting is the amount of people who seemed to go along with the result. I also wonder did the large number of yes's effect the way some people decided to vote ??

Gandalf.

arcadegame2004

Whatever you say, Gandalf, I know that if a paper audit trail did exist in an E-voting election, it would lead to demands from losing candidates that the audit-trail be recounted umpteen times. Human-error means - and we have experience of this from recounts of the existing paper ballot system - that each recount would produce a different outcome. It doesn't matter that there are no arguments over what is and isn't a spoiled vote. Machines aren't emotionally-oriented towards any political party and therefore are not going to be influenced by party-political considerations when doing the count.

Phil_321

What's the big deal. It's 2004. We rely on machinces for everything. If you're so worried about technology why do you keep your money in a bank, drive a car, etc..... Electronic voting is very simple technology that is going to happen everywhere eventually anyway. Like, do you think any developed country is going to be using a system of paper voting in 20 years? I'm surprised something this simple didn't come in years ago.

star gazer

originally posted by gandalf
Actually I added 100 votes to the Yes column to see if anyone would twig it. Surprisingly only a couple seem to have and the majority just seemed to have accepted it.

originally posted by arcadegame2004
Machines aren't emotionally-oriented towards any political party and therefore are not going to be influenced by party-political considerations when doing the count.

No but machines are programmed by PEOPLE and people make mistakes never mind the conspiracy theories. The fact that the voting macjines and count software haven't been put under extensive testing in election conditions from start to finish is amateurish and will probably lead to mistakes and problems not being found. What's even worse is that there will be no paper trail to make sure the vote is correct.

We are being asked to trust a system that has not been properly tested for such an important task (ie elections). Yes we trust computers but for vital functions, computers have back-ups on an airplane we have pilots, with ATMs we get bank statements with which people can reconcile the banks and the customers accounts. With this electronic voting system we are getting a computer without any paper ballot we must trust a minister and his team to implement it even when the minister has been less than forth-coming about details surrounding the testing of the system and the details of what went on on the 2002 pilots. The testing isn't good enough and the system isnt good enough because it lacks a VVAT.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Whatever you say, Gandalf, I know that if a paper audit trail did exist in an E-voting election, it would lead to demands from losing candidates that the audit-trail be recounted umpteen times.

It only needs to be counted once, and not in the PR/STV way - just make sure that for every vote in the ballot module, there's a matching paper vote. If the paper votes match the electronic votes, then the electronic count is correct - no need to do the whole transfer/eliminate thing with paper.

Machines aren't emotionally-oriented towards any political party and therefore are not going to be influenced by party-political considerations when doing the count.

It doesn't matter whether an outcome is motivated by emotion, politics, coding errors or cosmic rays - if it's the wrong result, it's the wrong result, and the proposed system provides no confidence in the result.

Originally posted by Phil_321
What's the big deal. It's 2004. We rely on machinces for everything. If you're so worried about technology why do you keep your money in a bank, drive a car, etc..... Electronic voting is very simple technology that is going to happen everywhere eventually anyway. Like, do you think any developed country is going to be using a system of paper voting in 20 years? I'm surprised something this simple didn't come in years ago.

I keep my money in a bank because I have an audit trail of my transactions. I drive a car because when something goes wrong, it's entirely obvious that it has gone wrong and I know that it has to be repaired.

Electronic voting should be a simple technology - why then does this implementation have 200,000 lines of code, with 70,000 for the Irish system alone?

Tuars

There will probably have to be a lot of extra work adapting the software to incorporate the referendum and really most of the development issues for the system should be sorted by now.

I read that the system cannot cope with the three different ballots (local, European and referendum). If you are not entitled to vote in all three then the machine has to be switched off and on again to get your vote recorded.


A significant amount of people are affected by this (i.e in the hundreds of thousands).

This seems to make the system ripe for abuse and errors.

ShaneHogan

Originally posted by Tuars
I read that the system cannot cope with the three different ballots (local, European and referendum). If you are not entitled to vote in all three then the machine has to be switched off and on again to get your vote recorded.


A significant amount of people are affected by this (i.e in the hundreds of thousands).

This seems to make the system ripe for abuse and errors.

While I oppose the proposed new system, this is not strictly true, but there is a matter for concern here. The current system can cope with the different voting options via different key settings on the machine. When your name is checked off the register, you will be given a ticket that reflects your voting qualfications (colour coding, I think). When you hand this ticket to the control operator for the voting machine, he/she will set the key on the machine to give you only the correct voting options on screen.

However, the outstanding concern is how accurate the control operator will be - If he/she makes an error and you don't get the right voting options, will you know about it immediately, or after you vote for the first election on screen? If you complain then, will you be given another vote for the remaining election?

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Whatever you say, Gandalf, I know that if a paper audit trail did exist in an E-voting election, it would lead to demands from losing candidates that the audit-trail be recounted umpteen times. Human-error means - and we have experience of this from recounts of the existing paper ballot system - that each recount would produce a different outcome. It doesn't matter that there are no arguments over what is and isn't a spoiled vote. Machines aren't emotionally-oriented towards any political party and therefore are not going to be influenced by party-political considerations when doing the count.

This is not true - there is very little concern about the ability of the eVoting system to count the vote. As they plan to publish the full vote database, anyone can double-check the count on their home PC (taking into to account the random selection element of vote transfers).

The real concern is whether the vote recorded by the new system accurately reflects the options chosen on screen by the voter. A paper audit trail would give a 100% guarantee on this point. All you need to do is to compare each paper vote against the electronic votes. Once you have ensured that the paper votes match the electronic votes (which I admit would be a fairly painful, slow, manual exercise), you can trust the electronic count result. Indeed, as part of the implementation of the audit trail, there should be random spot checks of paper vs electronic votes at 5%-10% of voting machines.

Originally posted by Phil_321
What's the big deal. It's 2004. We rely on machinces for everything. If you're so worried about technology why do you keep your money in a bank, drive a car, etc..... Electronic voting is very simple technology that is going to happen everywhere eventually anyway. Like, do you think any developed country is going to be using a system of paper voting in 20 years? I'm surprised something this simple didn't come in years ago.

Funnily enough, Phil - I used to think that way when this system was accounced in to 2002 - then I started doing some basic research, and I was horrified at what I found. eVoting has the unique requirement of anonymity compared to other IT applications. When you do an ATM transaction, the transaction is recorded to YOUR account - when you cast your vote electronically, there must be no link between the vote and you. This unique requirement presents significant challenges that only a paper audit trail can answer.

Tuars

While I oppose the proposed new system, this is not strictly true

Thanks for the clarification. I knew there was an issue but I wasn't sure of the details.

The process as you describe it seems very cumbersome (modern technology howareya) and is as open to error and abuse as I had imagined.

And as with everything else in the new system these errors will be totally untraceable.

star gazer

Reading some sunday papers this morning i came accross an article which is fairly comprehensive on the issues surrounding electronic voting. Sunday business post page 11.
basically it describes some of the concerns of highly qualified individuals who have made submissions about the system being introduced to the commission on electronic voting and goes through the usual list of rudimentary problems including the system is being overseen by government instead of an independent commission, no Voter verified paper audit trail, no access to the source code and no cross-party support...
after reading this it would be hard to see how the government can credibly go ahead with the system and if you had heard Joe McCarthy on Today FM on Friday i don't think there would be much doubt about it imho.

arcadegame2004

Germany and the Netherlands have used this system for 15 years with no hiccups.

ShaneHogan

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Germany and the Netherlands have used this system for 15 years with no hiccups.

Really? How did the manage the amazing feat of using a system which runs on MS Access 97 in 1989 (15 years ago)? The details that I saw of the system used in Germany included an 'abstain' button which doesn't exist on the Irish system. The count rules in Germany & Netherlands are much simpler than the Irish PR-STV system.

So they haven't used 'this system' - they have used similar systems based on similar Nedap voting machines. And of course, the absence of a paper audit trail means that they will never know if there have been any hiccups or not.

Victor

Originally posted by Tuars
I read that the system cannot cope with the three different ballots (local, European and referendum). If you are not entitled to vote in all three then the machine has to be switched off and on again to get your vote recorded.

Actually some people will have 4 votes in June, town/borough council, county council, European and referendum.

Originally posted by arcadegame2004
Germany and the Netherlands have used this system for 15 years with no hiccups.

Actually no. In Germany, it has only been used for a few years in Cologne and has been trialled in Dusseldorf. Nowhere else.

star gazer

originally posted by arcadegame2004
Germany and the Netherlands have used this system for 15 years with no hiccups.

And all along we are being told that we should be modernising our voting system, not put in computers that are 15 years old (20 in holland). The system as has been said is diffierent for the Irish version. Powervote are on board and while Nedap has a long history, powervotes history of providing components for electronic voting seems less than clear.
A coherent argument from the government's side would help to let people know where they stand.