General Irish politics discussion thread

Sam Russell

If we were to attempt to go for electronic counting, we should be aware that a vast number of countries already do this. The first step of transferring to ballot paper into a computer file is not something new - but verifying it to be accurate in a way that is transparent but retains anonymity - not difficult to achieve.

As for software development, the politics departments in the various universities would be willing to handle it if they got access to the raw data. It would be the subject of many a published paper and thesis.

The way to keep the head cases out is to put a minimum percentages of a quota to get passed the first round following a redistribution of any first round surpluses. 2.5% or 5% of quota might be a good threshold.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120675631#Comment_120675631

What are the accuracy and reliability issues with the current system?

Would it really be lower cost, or would be a parallel system on top of the existing paper system, with candidates insisting on full paper counts in tight races, leading to much additional cost on top of the current system? Papers still need to be opened, flattened, stacked, counted, batched, controlled.

Speed - yeah, probably, you'd get your results faster. But so what? What benefit arises from faster results?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676156#Comment_120676156

Who decided that we need to keep smaller candidates away? We had an independent in my constituency in the last general election, who focused solely on the important issue of universal basic income, something that is getting more and more discussion now with the impacts of AI on the future of work becoming more and more visible.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/election-2020-i-am-a-longshot-but-if-i-can-get-the-ideas-out-there-that-is-a-win-1.4165334

So was he a 'head case' who should have been prevented from running, or was he way ahead of his time?

To be honest ICR would be no problem. Anything unreadable just gets the same scrutiny as current ballots. Spoiled and illegible get treated the same as now.

A representative sample could be manually counted to tally against the ICR.

As there are still physical ballots there's no cyber security issues around terminals and updates. ICR machines are used in your passport applications and they've sped up the process no end.

I work on a cyber security team and would be vehemently against e-voting.

I used to be a sys-admin for a large ICR and OCR processing company and would, honestly, be supportive of them

Podge_irl

I'm agnostic on the issue of electronic voting and see no real issue with they way we do it now.

Our rules on how, when and where people can actually vote are however incredibly restrictive by international norms and almost certainly restrict the franchise of people. Arguments about how the lack of postal voting restrict vote selling or duress voting strike me as fairly similar to arguments made in the UK at the moment for voter ID laws. Postal votes are implemented globally and we have yet to see a fracturing of democratic institutions because of it.

All of these questions involve trade-offs, but it is always worth remembering that we are very much on the highly restrictive end of the scale and outside the norm.

Hotblack Desiato

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676273#Comment_120676273

In the context of open borders with the UK and our EU partners (whatever about anywhere else in the world) universal basic income is an insane idea.

But even if that fella got elected, how is one independent going to achieve anything?

Water John

Well UBI is being trialled again. It's an idea that won't go away.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/jun/04/universal-basic-income-of-1600-pounds-a-month-to-be-trialled-in-england

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676273#Comment_120676273

Well, the only candidates to be rejected at an early stage are those whose first pref votes are below a threshold. Obviously, any surpluses by candidates getting above the quota needs to be distributed first. The likelihood of those candidates actually getting elected is vanishingly small. It would cut down the number of counts hugely.

Of course with e-counting it would not matter.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676271#Comment_120676271

Well, there have been cases where recounts have found significant errors. That shows the current system is not perfect. Hopefully, e-counting will be accepted as much as tennis at Wimbledon accept Hawkeye as final - even though it is far from plausible that it can be that accurate. The same will happen to e-counting that it will be accepted.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120677421#Comment_120677421

Where and when have recounts shown significant errors?

Would we be better off investing in fixing any issues in the current system rather than going for technology for technology’s sake?

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676591#Comment_120676591

UBI is very serious proposition that has never been more relevant, and well beyond the scope of this thread. You’re entitled to your opinion on it of course, but that doesn’t mean that candidates with a focus on the issue should get filtered out.

If you want to know what one candidate can do, go back and ask Tony Gregory’s constituents from the 1980s.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120677467#Comment_120677467

I do not think it is technology for the sake of it.

There is a problem with the Euro votes. With votes in the order of 700,000 and candidates numbering 25 for four seats, just handling the ballot papers is a major issue not just for the voters, but the counters and the tallymen.

I cannot believe that errors do not occur.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120677643#Comment_120677643

What is the problem specifically?

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120678115#Comment_120678115

The size of the ballot paper and the number of candidates and the number of ballots. It is such a huge quantity of paper to shift around the place during a count.

Anyway, it is going to be a long time before it becomes a live issue in Irish politics unless we are mandated to do it by the EU for EU elections - which is unlikely.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120678459#Comment_120678459

It’s one sheet of paper. The size of the paper doesn’t cause any particular difficulty during the count that I’ve seen. Any move to electronic counting won’t change the size of the ballot paper.

Larbre34

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120677643#Comment_120677643

I've counted at least 20 elections and referendums down the years, the size of the ballot isn't particularly relevant to the duration of the count, much more the turnout.

Mistakes do occur, but rarely and the system is designed so that you have a continuing count that much reach the total of the valid poll at every stage and if it does not, it's simple to go back one step and recount that stage again.

Honestly its very transparent and quite foolproof and if all else fails, you can do a full recount at any point.

Time consuming, but dependable.

Brussels Sprout

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120676419#Comment_120676419

The fact that the Seanad elections are done by postal votes shows that it is odd that they are restricted so much in Dail elections.

The main downside I can think of is that they can hold up election counts. You can see this commonly in the USA where, depending on the state and district, some elections take weeks to be fully counted and certified because they are waiting for the final postal votes to come in (Alaska & California always take ages).

Given that Ireland is a relatively small country though it shouldn't take any votes that are post-marked on election day more than 2 or 3 days to come in. So either you delay counting for 3-4 days or you ask people who vote by post to vote earlier (as currently happens on many of the islands off the West coast)

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120678922#Comment_120678922

The fact that Seanad elections are done by postal vote tells us more about the irrelevance and low significance of the Seanad than anything else.

Hotblack Desiato

Interesting though that the university Seanad seats are the only election where residing overseas is not a problem!

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120669186#Comment_120669186

No, silly, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that people's distrust of e-voting systems is part of the reason why Trumpist lies find traction. But their distrust of e-voting systems is not itself built on a mistrust of government, climate denial and anti-vax sentiment; it's built of a lack of understanding of the technology plus what they perceive to be common and frequent failings of that technology in other areas of life plus, in the US case, a past history of, um, electoral systems of patchy integrity and reliability. (Bush -v- Gore, anyone?)

We don't have the latter problem in Ireland, but we do have the two former problems, in spades. Which means that even if an e-voting system is entirely reliable it will not be easily perceived as entirely reliable by the voters whose confidence it needs to command. And, therefore, introducing such a system will impair confidence in democracy, which is a Bad Thing.

That's the challenge that which proponents of e-voting need to overcome. I have already indicate what I think has to be done to overcome it. If you want an illustration of how not to overcome it, of how to make the credibility problem worse, well, well, the hysterical post to which I am replying here is an Awful Example.

VinLieger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120680948#Comment_120680948

Not really since they aren't constituencies based on physical boundaries of where you live and are solely about alumni status of a university.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120681034#Comment_120681034

Well, yeah, but if we have votes for all citizens without any residence requirement then that franchise too will be based on personal status and not on the physical boundaries of where you live.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120680997#Comment_120680997

I'm a senior sys-admin on a security team. I dread the idea of e-voting.

Electronic counting of paper ballots? No problem whatsoever

Electronic ballots? Please god no

Sam Russell

Bertie Ahern tried e-voting and it was an expensive disaster. Not only did we have to pay for obsolete hardware, and not own the software, we had to store these machines for years, and then pay for them to be disposed to landfill.

I think any politician that suggested e-voting would be insane.

e_Counting is a different matter entirely. Much less hardware, software would be owned by the Gov, and the ballots would be retained unmolested.

Seth Brundle

In terms of e-counting, while the tech would be easy enough to implement, is there a desire for it in Ireland?

Many people love the count process and won't like it if the "fun" was over in a few minutes

PommieBast

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682014#Comment_120682014

To me that sounds as much about the typical public sector IT botch job as any problem with e-voting itself. Then again after the Leinster House printer debacle suppose an allowance has to be made for someone screwing up.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682524#Comment_120682524

The botch job was around proceeding with a project like this without a clear business case- a clear understanding of the benefits that will arise.

And people are trying to do exactly the same again with eCounting.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682824#Comment_120682824

No-one is trying to do anything with e-Counting. It is not on any parties agenda in any shape.

The e-voting fiasco was a vanity project of the time, in the same vein as the Bertie Bowl, and the original Children's Hospital. Badly thought out, badly costed. In the end, all were total failures.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682824#Comment_120682824

Politicians getting a "fancy" new idea...

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682824#Comment_120682824

There is a clear business case for e-counting.

Faster, repeatable, secure, efficiency. Don't need to employ all the counters, security, and halls for days on end.

Known cost up front too, generally.

How much the cost differences would stack up would be key. Scanning software/hardware would also be usable for social welfare, medical, or other ICR government forms

There is a case, strength of that case would need to be examined

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120682913#Comment_120682913

That was the business case for electronic voting too, that we wouldn't have to employ all those counting staff. Then they realised that each of the 7,000 machines required a dedicated operator to disable and enable voting between each voter. The extra manpower was more than was required for the counting. 

I suspect similar would happen here for eCounting. We're still going to need staff to open boxes, open out folded papers, line up papers in nice bundles to run through the scanners. We're still going to have manual counts if there are queries over the electronic versions. Public service bodies already have plenty of scanners, and are moving away from OCR to online data services, so they're not going to benefit from these yokes. It's another tech solution looking for a problem to solve.

The only benefit is 'faster', which really isn't a tangible benefit. So what if it is a day or two faster?