Government close to scrapping 7,500 unused electronic voting machines

DonJose

7,500 electronic voting machines which cost €50 million to purchase and €650,000 to store between 2004 and 2007 may be scrapped. The reason the machines were never used was because of "concerns about the possibility of tampering with the machines and the lack of a paper trail". "the possibility of tampering with the machines and the lack of a paper trail" should have been the first question asked before spending €50,000,000 unbelievable :eek:

What the fukk were Fianna Fail thinking

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0210/breaking76.htm

dollybird09

bet they wish they had that money now....grrrrrrrrrrrr

im sure those machines could be used for other purposes.... any novel suggestions?

li@mo

I think we should vote on this.
Anyone agree?

drunkmonkey

I think we should tie one to every Politicians leg and let them go down and find some treasure in the English channel...

Biggins

ABOUT FCUKING TIME!!!

consultech

ha - They sure as sh1t don't want to have to use them anytime soon, coz we all know how that would go...

Senna

One should be put in the middle of every city, town and village in Ireland as a constant reminder of how stupid FF was during the boom.

token56

They haven't been scrapped already, wtf
Why waste money storing stuff that doesn't work?

sunshinegirl

ah sure no doubt they will be thrown into landfill, rather than be recycled.

Nehaxak

Talking about tampering with votes, I always found it very strange that pencils were only available at polling stations. I mean really, quick rub of an eraser and your vote for Sinn Fein has gone to Fianna Fail.
I would think it more easier to fix a penciled vote than an electronic vote.

It's why I always bring a pen with me to the polling stations, paranoid maybe...

drunkmonkey

Could we not sell them to Zimbabwe.....?

The_Minister

About time.

Electronic voting is a nice idea but it means that every unexpected result is put down as fraud.

@Nehaxak: People don't vote for Sinn Fein because they are a bunch of terrorists, not because their votes are being stolen.

The Mad Hatter

The machines were obsolete at the time of build and poorly made. It's a wrench that FF are dumping them after spending so much money on them, but it's better than either a) keeping them longer, or b) putting them into use.

Zaph

Nehaxak wrote: »

Talking about tampering with votes, I always found it very strange that pencils were only available at polling stations. I mean really, quick rub of an eraser and your vote for Sinn Fein has gone to Fianna Fail.
I would think it more easier to fix a penciled vote than an electronic vote.

It's why I always bring a pen with me to the polling stations, paranoid maybe...

My issue with them was less about vote rigging and more about personal choice. I used them one when they tested them in 3 or 4 constituencies for a referendum or local elections, can't remember what exactly. While I didn't actually want to do so, there was no option for me to deliberately spoil my vote if that had been my voting intention. I think it's important that people should retain the right to a "non-vote" if they wish to express their dissatisfaction with all the candidates offered or the chouices in a referendum.

RATM

They should at least save a few for the museum so future generations can see what a shambolic government we had in power at the time.

The_Minister

I always take a spoiled vote as a sign that someone isn't that bright.

jester77

So what does one do with 7500 unused electronic voting machines?

Wonder if they can play crisis

CiaranC

Bit OT, but does anyone actually know what hardware is in these machines?

c-note

yeah- i wonder what they'd go for
i'll start the bidding at €10 for 2

Zaph

The_Minister wrote: »

I always take a spoiled vote as a sign that someone isn't that bright.

In some cases that's true, but not always. I feel it's important to exercise my democratic right to vote. However, in the presidential election in 1997 there wasn't a single one of the 5 candidates that I could honestly say I wanted as president. Rather than voting for one just for the hell of it, I wrote "none of the above" on my ballot paper. It's the only time I've ever spoiled a vote, either deliberately or by mistake. Just because I don't want to vote for any of the candidates doesn't mean I should be denied my right to express my opinion.

towel401

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Could we not sell them to Zimbabwe.....?

don't need voting machines for one-option polls

Nehaxak

The_Minister wrote: »

@Nehaxak: People don't vote for Sinn Fein because they are a bunch of terrorists, not because their votes are being stolen.

lol, guess we better stop them before they invade our imagination then :rolleyes:

kowloon

The_Minister wrote: »

I always take a spoiled vote as a sign that someone isn't that bright.

Not all of us were clever enough to know that Dustin was not, in fact, a real candidate.

Biggins

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Could we not sell them to Zimbabwe.....?

They don't have the money to buy them and also, there's not enough educated enough folk to be able to read the names in places sadly.

Mugabe has a LOT to answer for.
The day he passes away I will gladly double the money for that day, I give regular to a rape crises centre in celebration.

Senna

Was there not a company that said they could, with very little modifications, put them in national schools as an interactive learning aid.
If it was possible to do ANYTHING with them, those options show be explored.

Biggins

Senna wrote: »

Was there not a company that said they could, with very little modifications, put them in national schools as an interactive learning aid.
If it was possible to do ANYTHING with them, those options show be explored.

I'm all for recycling them also but there is limited options.
The software (which is always VERY expensive) alone is specific designed and tweaked for our electoral system. This can be changed again but only with the absolute copyright rights attached and bought.
A buyer would know this alone and take it into account when buying them.
Also the internals, motherboard, RAM, etc are now second-hand. All parts would have to be re-tested before possibly being sold on again. Testing them all too would be expensive.

School software for such machines would then have to be altered/designed to operate according to the physical buttons and layout of the machines. Again - more expensive costs involved.

Run_to_da_hills

CiaranC wrote: »

Bit OT, but does anyone actually know what hardware is in these machines?

My guess would be something like a slot 1 Celeron plus about 8 megs of ram. :P

RATM

They should recycle the voting machines into these and let them run the country.

BaconZombie

The hardware is ALOT older then that.... it basically a Sinclair ZX.....

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

My guess would be something like a slot 1 Celeron plus about 8 megs of ram. :P

Nehaxak

Full specs of the systems are available here...

http://www.vgmuseum.com/systems/jaguar/

Professey Chin

jester77 wrote: »

So what does one do with 7500 unused electronic voting machines?

Wonder if they can play crisis

Only Economic Crysis

ART6

sunshinegirl wrote: »

ah sure no doubt they will be thrown into landfill, rather than be recycled.

Under the EU Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (WEEE) they can't be landfilled, so if the government did that they would be considered to be taking the p*ss.:P

kowloon

They could be put in schools and used as the centrepiece on 'governmental ineptitude: the age of corruption and self-interest'. :pac:.

Mark200

DonJose wrote: »

7,500 electronic voting machines which cost €50 million to purchase and €650,000 to store between 2004 and 2007 may be scrapped. The reason the machines were never used was because of "concerns about the possibility of tampering with the machines and the lack of a paper trail". "the possibility of tampering with the machines and the lack of a paper trail" should have been the first question asked before spending €50,000,000 unbelievable :eek:

What the fukk were Fianna Fail thinking

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2009/0210/breaking76.htm

There was absolutely nothing wrong with them. The "concerns" did not come from computer scientists, they came from normal people who really don't have a clue about technology and how it works. Sure they use electronic voting all the time in America, when was the last time you heard of concerns about the software or about possible hacking?

Zaph wrote: »

My issue with them was less about vote rigging and more about personal choice. I used them one when they tested them in 3 or 4 constituencies for a referendum or local elections, can't remember what exactly. While I didn't actually want to do so, there was no option for me to deliberately spoil my vote if that had been my voting intention. I think it's important that people should retain the right to a "non-vote" if they wish to express their dissatisfaction with all the candidates offered or the chouices in a referendum.

If there is no option for you....then don't vote. It's not like you don't know your choices before you go to the polling station.

And referendum....the choices are generally yes or no. What other choices do you want?

You can write whatever you want on it: "None of the above" or "I don't have a clue" or draw a nice little picture of how you think the government are useless. The government and candidates won't see it or hear about it. They'll just see the amount of spoilt votes, regardless of what you wrote on it. If you really aren't happy with any candidates, then go run for the election yourself if you care that much.

cherryghost

I demand as an apology to the nation, they split the 50 millions with us, the taxpayers.

i believe that will get us somewhere in the region of 12 euro each! wewt! what would you spend yours on?

Biggins

cherryghost wrote: »

I demand as an apology to the nation, they split the 50 millions with us, the taxpayers.

i believe that will get us somewhere in the region of 12 euro each! wewt! what would you spend yours on?

Bullets for my Dragunov 7.62 mm semi-automatic sniper rifle and point it at certain useless elected officials!

Run_to_da_hills

With the increasing dole queues the Government should take the opportunity to adapt and install these machines in all the labour exchanges across the country. It would be far more efficient than signing on and will save significantly on paperwork and administration.

old gregg

hmm... there were plenty of concerns raised by IT professionals at the time, the most obvious being the fact that a Microsoft Access database formed part of the software solution. Those from a DB programming background will probably agree that much and all as M$ Access has its uses for small projects you'd hardly want to pass several million records through an Access DB and trust it not to spew.

Biggins

old gregg wrote: »

hmm... there were plenty of concerns raised by IT professionals at the time, the most obvious being the fact that a Microsoft Access database formed part of the software solution. Those from a DB programming background will probably agree that much and all as M$ Access has its uses for small projects you'd hardly want to pass several million records through an Access DB and trust it not to spew.

Security access from an Access database architecture platform is a joke.
If they (the purchasers) had ANY kop-on, the very least they should have went with Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or Paradox to begin with.

Not a tweaked and ramped up simplistic Access! Jeeze...

smellslikeshoes

I would have thought it would have made more sense to have done away with them back then when they decided they weren't to be used instead of storing them. It really does seem like a royal **** up of judgment to be to be thinking about getting rid of them now with the current economic climate and the governments poor approval rating.

limklad

I am against electronic Voting as it currently stands for all Elections as it can be riged/tampered or misprogrammed or curropted. by numberous of senerios and most importantely it has no backup system i.e. No paper trail to verify the accuracies of votes. also no ability of protest vote. i.e. Candities are not of good enough quality., Voters should express that right and yet carry out the duty to vote.

As a programmer, I know how easily unententional mistakes can happen and also who to gerry rig the voting instruments If I got access to them and find out how it works then rewrite some code for it. Voting Machines are not that complex!! Your Diswasher, mobile Phone, Watch and Microwave are far more complex to program these Days.

Maybe if Voting Machines used printed Votes and then ballot the printed vote into a sealed box as present votes are placed. Th Voter can Verify if there vote was casted correctly and then cast the Printed backup vote into the Box.

Samples Boxes are opened to statisticly verify the election results before Election anouncements results and it would help to prove the accuracties of votes.
Any Tight Results then all boxes be open and counted to verfiy the Results beyond Doubt.

Also If there is any decrepacies or disputes then the Paper vote can be used to verify results.

The Backup Voting can be also be used to Election Day Media Photo's instead of the Electronic dark Hide and vote box and come out and be dazalled into google eye face by then flashing lights of Cameras, etc.

limklad

Biggins wrote: »

Security access from an Access database architecture platform is a joke.
If they (the purchasers) had ANY kop-on, the very least they should have went with Oracle, MySQL, DB2, or Paradox to begin with.

Not a tweaked and ramped up simplistic Access! Jeeze...

I agree and I would question any election result if Microsoft software is been used. I would not used it in an election with 10 voters!!
You do not need complex databases for Voting Machine. A simple Database on each machine with Duplicate each electronic Vote on two electonic Database on the Electronic voting and can be used as a quick check if every thing is going alright at the polling booth and the vote is printed on the Backup ballot sheet when the voter votes and it would be a great backup if things go awry.

thebigcheese22

Mark200 wrote: »

Sure they use electronic voting all the time in America, when was the last time you heard of concerns about the software or about possible hacking?.

I lol'd so hard at this!!! Yeah sure the Florida vote in 2000 wasn't rigged at all! :rolleyes:

marcsignal

drunkmonkey wrote: »

Could we not sell them to Zimbabwe.....?

naw, sure that's where we bought them

blackbox

Step 1 - they should put them up on EBay - some people/institutions will buy them out of curiosity.

Step 2 - Put them up on Dublinwaste.ie - some people will take them out of curiosity.

Step 3 - Try to get someone to recycle them.

Step 4 - Throw whatever is left in a hole in the ground.

Cuddlesworth

thebigcheese22 wrote: »

I lol'd so hard at this!!! Yeah sure the Florida vote in 2000 wasn't rigged at all! :rolleyes:

In fairness, it was rigged mainly through the media. The same could happen through electronic or paper.

Capt'n Midnight

old gregg wrote: »

hmm... there were plenty of concerns raised by IT professionals at the time, the most obvious being the fact that a Microsoft Access database formed part of the software solution. Those from a DB programming background will probably agree that much and all as M$ Access has its uses for small projects you'd hardly want to pass several million records through an Access DB and trust it not to spew.

The US ones were using a 16 bit check sum, so worst case you only had to generate 66,000 fake results to get one that matched the genuine one. Shouldn't take too long on a quad core cpu that can process 12 billion instructions per second, then again the GPU in an Xbox 360 might be even faster

Capt'n Midnight

jester77 wrote: »

So what does one do with 7500 unused electronic voting machines?

Wonder if they can play crisis

CiaranC wrote: »

Bit OT, but does anyone actually know what hardware is in these machines?

On line demo http://www.1mho.com/evoting/


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IIRC they are the same as the Dutch machines and yes they can be programmed to play chess, but they are obsolete from every point of view

evoke

The specs of the voting machine are low then. Is that correct?

Are they touch screen monitors that are on them. Does anyone know exactly where they are stored?

Biggins

evoke wrote: »

...Does anyone know exactly where they are stored?

They are being stored around the country in a number of places.
Primetime last year did a piece on them. They have to be stored in special environmental rooms to ensure that the circuit boards do not become corrupt due to lack of use.
Primetime also brought up the topical area of some the stored location buildings were coincidently owned by TD's and government officials.
Both of whom were charging and getting HUGE amounts to store them.

hedgeh0g

Biggins wrote: »

They are being stored around the country in a number of places.


Primetime also brought up the topical area of some the stored location buildings were coincidently owned by TD's and government official.
Both of whom were charging and getting HUGE amounts to store them.

fcukers