E-Voting Machines, Coming to a Pub Near YOU!!!

HellFireClub

http://www.independent.ie/national-news/michael-noonan-suggests-evoting-machines-could-find-a-home-in-pubs-2985267.html

FINANCE Minister Michael Noonan has said Irish pubs around the world could offer new homes for defunct and costly e-voting machines.
The idea would give punters and emigrants the chance to vent their electoral anger on 7,500 electronic units rather than turning to jukeboxes and gaming machines.
"Fianna Fail thought it would not be fashionable as Bertie (Ahern) said to be 'using the peann luaidhe' any more and that you needed to have a hi-tech machine," he said.
"But when the hi-tech machine was checked out it didn't do the job that it was supposed to do so the system was flawed. They are valueless now.
"There may be a market for them in Irish-themed pubs across the world."
It is understood the Government is aiming to get rid of the machines over the next six months and is discussing whether to try to sell-off or recycle.
The idea was the brainchild of Mr Ahern's Fianna Fail government at the height of the Celtic Tiger boom and promoted by former ministers Noel Dempsey and Martin Cullen.
The botched plan has cost the taxpayer 55 million euro since the machines were first used in 2002 when former Fine Gael minister Nora Owen suffered sudden defeat in the general election. They were also piloted in the Nice referendum. Storage alone costs 145,000 euro a year.
The plug was pulled on nationwide rollout of e-voting for the 2004 European and local elections after an expert committee ruled against using the system.
The machines, which are believed to be out of date and not even fit for educational use, were manufactured by Dutch firm Nedap. Serious public concerns in Ireland, Holland and Germany have prompted thousands of similar units to be decommissioned.
Most of the machines are stored in Gormanston army camp, Co Meath, with another 14 machines in the Custom House, Dublin, and a small number held locally by returning officers.

chin_grin

Related.

HellFireClub

chin_grin wrote: »

Related.

Oops didn't see it...

danniemcq

if they are in Irish theme pubs it'll just reinforce the reasons why people left when they look at them

plus at what they cost i can't see to many publicans buying them and then shipping them over

HellFireClub

Scrap metal gets 180 Euro a tonne at the moment, sounds like the best return that could be got from them, unless Robert Mugabe might be interested in acquiring them...

Ray Palmer

The machines themselves was never the problem it was the people who wanted to make the government look bad.

They worked but people made up unlikely scenarios to riddicule them.

Inverse to the power of one!

Ray Palmer wrote: »

The machines themselves was never the problem it was the people who wanted to make the government look bad.

They worked but people made up unlikely scenarios to riddicule them.

Yep, just a conspiracy to make FF and the Govt. look incompetent, because we all know that neither could possibly be that stupid!

Oh wait.....we've just received the latest metrics for their stupidity, about 500,000EUR for every living person on the Island.....THAT STUPID!

But it's just the begrudgers.....right?

Sonics2k

Ray Palmer wrote: »

The machines themselves was never the problem it was the people who wanted to make the government look bad.

They worked but people made up unlikely scenarios to riddicule them.

What are you talking about? Those machines were utter garbage and proven to not work correctly, and yet FF went ahead with their plan to waste our money on them.

mandate

The technology used to build the E voting machines was outdated even at the time of their launch. The chip used was from the 1980's.

If the machines cost €55,000,000 and there were 7,000 machines, then theoretically each machine cost €7,857.

Seeing as it is the Irish tax payer, yet again, that foots the bill for this, there are a few things that should be made openly available to us.

1. We are entitled to a breakdown in the cost of manufacture, the details of the company who made them, and details of the original tender for manufacture.

2. Full details of the cost of storage @ €150,000 per annum, how the cost can be justified and who this money goes to etc.

3. A breakdown in the cost of re-adjusting the machines when it was discovered that the led screens would have benn too dark to be able to see during daylight. This cost €1,500 per machine, how so?

*I am being cynical here, but could it be that the re-emergence of the E voting machines saga in the news headlines, be a smoke-screen for this

Solair

Can we have them turned into a large piece of installation art and installed on the Lower Drumcondra Road in Dublin?

If similar machines are in use *anywhere*, I think it would be only fair that these machines would be destroyed / made totally useless (more so) as they could be used to hack someone else's similar e-voting system.

Any circuit boards could simply be removed and destroyed / recycled.

Perhaps the best solution would be destroy all but say 5 of them, and have them turned into pieces of art and auctioned off. They could actually fetch quite a bit of money as memorabilia.

I don't really see how we are paying for these machines at all given they seem be utterly useless pieces of technology.

Who the hell signed off on the specification !??!

It seems like they were approached by that salesman who sold Springfield (Simpsons) the Monorail.

Cdub

Looks like the good old boys in government decided to sell them instead, they're advertised here http://www.buyandsell.ie/search/for-sale/electronics/dublin/e+voting/7500-e-vote-machines-forsale-hardlyused-2 brilliant!!

Dotrel

One upside is I like to imagine they're all being stored in a warehouse like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25b5D7koHuM

Stinicker

Dotrel wrote: »

One upside is I like to imagine they're all being stored in a warehouse like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25b5D7koHuM

No they were actually stored all over the country in what became a Fianna Fail cottage industry. Basically cronies and friends of Fianna Fail "won" :rolleyes: contracts to store the machines and they were being paid upto 250k to store a few machines in respective sheds and there was an absolute fortune spent on "storage" by FF cronies.

steveh1

I woulnd mind getting my hands on one to try and convert it to an arcade machine Ive seen videos of people getting pacman running on american ones. I wonder if theyd be willing to split them up as i dont fancy buying all 7500 of them off the buy and sell.

Solair

Pacman would be a bit hard on a 1 / 2 line dot matrix display. The e-voting machines the Irish Government bought were incrediably primative machines.
Most payphones are more interactive!



Some of the machines used in the US and elsewhere look more like an ATM. They've a full graphical user interface.

The Irish ones were more like a 1980s car park payment machine.

I think the idea was to keep the software and hardware relatively primative so they were reliable and auditable, rather than just selecting primative machines.

There are some advantages to e-voting, partiularly with PR-STV. You do realise that the voting system we use introduces a big chunk of randomness when votes are redistributed using manual counts? An e-voting counting system can distribute surpluses entirely accuratly.

jerry2623

seen this on ebay interesting to see how much they will make

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Electronic-voting-machine-suitable-clubs-etc-/140679717168?pt=UK_WSJL_Wholesale_GL&hash=item20c12a2130

nice_very

I will do my bit for this Country, and hereby offer the sum of 1 (one) euro for one of these machines (delivery included).


I await PMs

muganj

Lads

Is there any truth to the story that Bertie had links to a Company who provided Storage faculities for these Machines ?

J

Nothingbetter2d

cant we just sell them to the Republican party in USA... they fixed every election they won anyways now they could use these e voting machines to do it quicker

My name is URL

Between this retarded idea from Noonan and Charlie Flanagan's plan to turn off motorway lights overnight I'm beginning to think that FG aren't as competent a party as they're letting on.

starbelgrade

Ray Palmer wrote: »

The machines themselves was never the problem it was the people who wanted to make the government look bad.

They worked but people made up unlikely scenarios to riddicule them.

I was going to type a proper response to this, but all I can do is point and laugh.

Inverse to the power of one!

My name is URL wrote: »

Between this retarded idea from Noonan and Charlie Flanagan's plan to turn off motorway lights overnight I'm beginning to think that FG aren't as competent a party as they're letting on.

Gombeen is as Gombeen does, no surprise here. Is there even a party in this country that knows the meaning of competence?

Just look at the Greens, probably the most modern of the parties, and look at the stupidity of their policies.

A sad reflection on the voters of this society.

Freddie59

mandate wrote: »

Seeing as it is the Irish tax payer, yet again, that foots the bill for this, there are a few things that should be made openly available to us.

1. We are entitled to a breakdown in the cost of manufacture, the details of the company who made them, and details of the original tender for manufacture.

2. Full details of the cost of storage @ €150,000 per annum, how the cost can be justified and who this money goes to etc.

3. A breakdown in the cost of re-adjusting the machines when it was discovered that the led screens would have benn too dark to be able to see during daylight. This cost €1,500 per machine, how so?

*I am being cynical here, but could it be that the re-emergence of the E voting machines saga in the news headlines, be a smoke-screen for this

In all fairness, what about the PPars debacle? Just another example of incompetent people purchasing equipment of which they know little.

FFS something that was supposed to cost €8m ends up costing €180m.

Freddie59

My name is URL wrote: »

Between this retarded idea from Noonan and Charlie Flanagan's plan to turn off motorway lights overnight I'm beginning to think that FG aren't as competent a party as they're letting on.

For fcuk's sake. Switch them off at PEAK times???? WTF??!!

BaconZombie

Technically we do not own the software on the Voting machines, the Irish government only bought a licence to use it so they can not legally sell them.....

starbelgrade

Inverse to the power of one! wrote: »

Gombeen is as Gombeen does, no surprise here. Is there even a party in this country that knows the meaning of competence?

Just look at the Greens, probably the most modern of the parties, and look at the stupidity of their policies.

A sad reflection on the voters of this society.

If there isn't a competent party in the country, then I don't see how that can be a sad reflection on the electorate.

Ray Palmer

Sonics2k wrote: »

What are you talking about? Those machines were utter garbage and proven to not work correctly, and yet FF went ahead with their plan to waste our money on them.

Care to state how they didn't work?

The problem was there was no failure recovery option. They actually worked correctly.

Other complaints were you copuld break into them and alter them which is what you can do with ballot boxes too.

Lots of reasons why people didn't want them and the agenda wasn't just directed at the political party but protection of the people who count votes.

Old tech was used for certain stability.ATMs use really old tech too

The storage tendering was certainly a joke but the machines were not really a problem.

The contract was baddly done too but the machines were not the problem.

Nothingbetter2d

Ray Palmer wrote: »

Care to state how they didn't work?

The problem was there was no failure recovery option. They actually worked correctly.

Other complaints were you copuld break into them and alter them which is what you can do with ballot boxes too.

Lots of reasons why people didn't want them and the agenda wasn't just directed at the political party but protection of the people who count votes.

Old tech was used for certain stability.ATMs use really old tech too

The storage tendering was certainly a joke but the machines were not really a problem.

The contract was baddly done too but the machines were not the problem.

those ATM's you see in shops and petrol stations still use windows NT 4.0 sp6 :eek: pretty much every hacker in the world knows how to hack win nt its been around for so long.

Ray Palmer

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

those ATM's you see in shops and petrol stations still use windows NT 4.0 sp6 :eek: pretty much every hacker in the world knows how to hack win nt its been around for so long.

But strangely they don't:rolleyes: You need to be able to get access inorder to hack it. NT is still used for lots of things. Still pretty simple to break a lock and replace bits of paper. It doesn't happen the same way hacking these machines was not really a threat

BaconZombie

There were ATM's in Ireland that were running OS/2 { OS/2 1.0 was announced in April 1987 } so Windows NT was an upgrade....

Most are running Windows XP now which is also ~10 years old as well.....

The E-Voting system have less processing power then Commodore 64 FFS.

Nothingbetter2d wrote: »

those ATM's you see in shops and petrol stations still use windows NT 4.0 sp6 :eek: pretty much every hacker in the world knows how to hack win nt its been around for so long.

teddansonswig

i had an idea for the machines,

distribute them around the country in county council offices

allow people to vote on current issues

not a binding referendum but an indication as to the publics wishes
and using the f'n things!

Cicero

For boardsies suffering withdrawal symptoms from voting threads when out on the batter...Atari Jaguar....FTW