Why was E-Voting scrapped??

kippy · 09-11-2010 11:36PM

seamus wrote: »

But if subversive forces take control of an election to install a government that we haven't collectively voted for, well the consequences there can destroy my life and my children's lives.

That is pretty Ironic, given the present circumstances.........

Also, anyone have the costs associated with administering an election by the way.

irishh_bob · 10-11-2010 03:41PM

nora owen didnt like the fact that news of her loosing her seat wasnt broken to her gently in the traditional way , remember her describing how her and her fellow canditates were herded on to a platform like cattle to hear the result , so they scrapped them

irish solution to an irish problem

kippy · 10-11-2010 03:42PM

irishh_bob wrote: »

nora owen didnt like the fact that news of her loosing her seat wasnt broken to her gently in the traditional way , remember her describing how her and her fellow canditates were herded on to a platform like cattle to hear the result , so they scrapped them

irish solution to an irish problem

There were other issues in fairness but I agree on that broad point.

gizmo555 · 10-11-2010 07:54PM

ballsymchugh wrote: »

so what was so very wrong about the e-voting??

From the Irish Computer Society's submission to the Commission on Electronic Voting:

. . . the proposed Nedap/Powervote system contains a fundamental design flaw which renders it unfit for use in elections and referenda, namely that it does not incorporate any means to independently verify the results it produces. As is explained below, computer systems are inherently error prone, and must be assumed to contain defects regardless of how thoroughly they have been tested . . .

. . . In the absence of an independent means of verifying every exercise of the Nedap/Powervote system, its accuracy in ongoing use, as distinct from occasional test, is undeterminable by design and therefore the accuracy of every result it produces will be unknown.

kippy · 10-11-2010 08:00PM

gizmo555 wrote: »

From the Irish Computer Society's submission to the Commission on Electronic Voting:

. . . the proposed Nedap/Powervote system contains a fundamental design flaw which renders it unfit for use in elections and referenda, namely that it does not incorporate any means to independently verify the results it produces. As is explained below, computer systems are inherently error prone, and must be assumed to contain defects regardless of how thoroughly they have been tested . . .

. . . In the absence of an independent means of verifying every exercise of the Nedap/Powervote system, its accuracy in ongoing use, as distinct from occasional test, is undeterminable by design and therefore the accuracy of every result it produces will be unknown.

I honestly dont think people realise how much we rely (sometimes in a life or death situation) on them 'puters.

I've seen a lot less investigation into far more important systems that would effect people on a more personal level than an IT solution to voting.

People have said that NO country in the world uses these for elections - lets kick start that knowledge economy

and come up with something we can sell abroad.

Dr_Teeth · 10-11-2010 11:31PM

Speaking as a computer science graduate, systems analyst, and general technology buff - no e-voting system will ever be as trustworthy as a room full of grannies counting bits of paper.

xper · 11-11-2010 12:49AM

kippy wrote: »

People have said that NO country in the world uses these for elections - lets kick start that knowledge economy and come up with something we can sell abroad.

Any enterprising IT company, Irish or otherwise, is welcome to try. I do think though that a closed, purely commercial package is doomed to failure for lack of trustworthiness. The business model would require making the system open to scrutiny to be attractive to democracies.

The system that was procured for Ireland fell hopelessly short in this and several other aspects. How it got as far as pilot phase beggars belief. I presume at some stage in the procurment process, there was some sort of assessment of the system by technically qualified personal. How they gave it the okay baffles me. Or were they just ignored? Or did the minister just take the sales pitch as gospel?

I knew people in Microsoft at the time that were horrified that Microsoft Access was the database software that the votes were collated on. It is simply not an enterprise level product. MS have SQL Server for that.

A post above decries the fact that the evoting machines were based on 1980's technology. That actually is not necessarily a bad thing. It is often the case that very critical sytems - things found in nuclear reactors, space probes, etc - use 'old' hardware precisely because it is proven technology that works reliably and has had its wrinkles ironed out over time. A simple twenty year old processor design will record and count votes just fine. It doesn't have to show them in [ [ 3D ] ]

That said, given the other failings of the mothballed evoting system, I suspect our Dutch friends were just being cheap in this case!

xper · 11-11-2010 01:03AM

kippy wrote: »

People have said that NO country in the world uses these for elections - lets kick start that knowledge economy and come up with something we can sell abroad.

Any enterprising IT company, Irish or otherwise, is welcome to try. I do think though that a closed, purely commercial package is doomed to failure for lack of trustworthiness. The business model would require making the system open to scrutiny to be attractive to democracies.

The system that was procured for Ireland fell hopelessly short in this and several other aspects. How it got as far as pilot phase beggars belief. I presume at some stage in the procurment process, there was some sort of assessment of the system by technically qualified personal. How they gave it the okay baffles me. Or were they just ignored? Or did the minister just take the sales pitch as gospel?

I knew people in Microsoft at the time that were horrified that Microsoft Access was the database software that the votes were collated on. It is simply not an enterprise level product. MS have SQL Server for that.

A post above decries the fact that the evoting machines were based on 1980's technology. That actually is not necessarily a bad thing. It is often the case that very critical sytems - things found in nuclear reactors, space probes, etc - use 'old' hardware precisely because it is proven technology that works reliably and has had its wrinkles ironed out over time. A simple twenty year old processor design will record and count votes just fine. It doesn't have to show them in [ [ 3D ] ]

That said, given the other failings of the mothballed evoting system, I suspect our Dutch friends were just being cheap in this case!

Dar · 11-11-2010 11:11PM

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

Ironically the people that make ATM's that people trust also make voting machines.

I'm bitterly disappointed by the luddite (albeit with genuine concerns) blocking of the introduction of electronic voting. I want a future where young people can easily vote on a wider range of issues than simply voting in a politician, where voting on laws is easily accessible to people online.

Of course we'd all then have to take more responsibility for those same laws being introduced.....

Every time someone compares e-voting to ATMs I cry a little inside. ATMs are far from perfect. The reason they work so well is that EVERYTHING is audit logged. This means that when things screw up (and they do regularly), the bank can quickly figure out what happened and fix it. Voting on the other hand must be 100% anonymous so you just can't implement the same degree of auditing.

Secondly - the greatest problem with e-voting isn't even a technical one. I'm a coder. Give me the source, hardware specs and some time and I'll be able to figure out what exactly these machines are doing. However:

I would have no way of verifying that the binaries used actually correspond to source examined
I probably wouldn't find any clever hacks that were deliberately obfuscated within the code
I would have no way to confirm that the machines hadn't been tampered with at the hardware level.

So someone who is (in comparison to the wider population at least) a domain expert can't 100% trust the results.

Voting systems which are not transparent to the vast majority of the population simply cannot be trusted. Those of us who are computer literate tend to forget that for a large portion of the population these machines might as well be magic boxes as far as the internals are concerned. At least with a paper based system you can actually walk into the counting stations, see what's happening and quickly understand the process involved without needing any sort of technical expertise.

thebman · 12-11-2010 01:41AM

I found out when on my 4th year project that my supervisor was one of the people that analysed these machines.

He has also been contracted to do work for IBM in research areas and was a lecturer for me for one year earlier in my course and is both smart and not caring about politics.

If ever I'd trust someone to evaluate a system like this, it would be that man who found massive flaws in it apparently.

the_syco · 12-11-2010 01:49AM

murphaph wrote: »

The article describes the physical hacking of the machines (talks about replacing a part, presumably that's the Microcontroller/EEPROM that contains the firmware that the machine runs off). This is no different surely than gaining access to ballot boxes and replacing their contents with new ballot papers, or am I missing something (ballot paper serial numbers must match a ballot box perhaps?)?

It would be like "gaining access to ballot boxes and replacing their contents with new ballot papers" before the ballot boxes were even put in a room next to a Garda.

pjmn · 12-11-2010 10:58PM

... an interesting potential alternative/option http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud.html

bleg · 12-11-2010 11:13PM

Was just about to post that pjmn

dvpower · 13-11-2010 02:03PM

If we were to apply the standards of security and integrity to the exisiting paper based system as we do to the eVoting system, we would scrap it immediatly.

The existing system is wide open to abuse.

BaconZombie · 13-11-2010 02:57PM

Based on US System to the same holds for the Irish Version:

Old Article but still nothing has changed:

CIA expert: Electronic voting not secure. Germany bans electronic voting machines.

Hack-a-Vote: Students at Rice learn how vulnerable electronic voting really is.

"Hotel Minibar" Keys Open Diebold Voting Machines.

thebman · 13-11-2010 04:30PM

dvpower wrote: »

If we were to apply the standards of security and integrity to the exisiting paper based system as we do to the eVoting system, we would scrap it immediatly.

The existing system is wide open to abuse.

True but if this governments machines are compared to paper, paper wins.

Other e-voting systems maybe better, this one was appallingly bad.

You can make a safe, verified e-voting systems but I've yet to see a government that has done this and people should be asking why?

The answer is obvious though, its in their interest to have one with back doors.

Why was E-Voting scrapped??

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