Net Results: Reader response to last week's column on some of the concerns and frustrations with electronic voting indicates this is a topic that definitely hasn't gone away - even if the machines the Government bought are languishing in some warehouse, writes Karlin Lillington.
And interestingly, many, perhaps most, people agree to some extent with the Taoiseach's annoyance at continuing to use "stupid old pencils", as he calls them, to mark their ballots.
Comments in e-mails and from people I spoke to seem split between those who would like to see e-voting introduced and those who strongly object.
The more surprising feedback, though is that many of those who would like to see e-voting come to pass are also those who are most strongly opposed to the machines and system available right now. They have no principled opposition to the idea - only to the current implementation.
The wary ones belong almost entirely to the camp of those whose key objection is the loss of the drama of the tally and the count.
They also will often note their objection to the loss of one's right to spoil a ballot if desired. I have always held that this element was key in sparking the initial indignation about the machines a few years back. Most people will probably never deliberately spoil a ballot in their life, but they sure cherish the right for others to do so.
Ultimately, those totally opposed to electronic voting tend to do so primarily on cultural grounds, with some of the technical grounds acting as convenient buttressing evidence for their stance.
There is a third group - those who strongly support electronic voting, want to use the machines now in storage, think they were put there because of silly political pressure, and were annoyed with me for restating old and, as they see it, misleading arguments.
E-voting machines aren't on networks and aren't connected to the internet so they aren't hackable, they contend. And they suggest no one really cares about taking home paper copies of how they voted. In any case, they argue, many countries from India to the US use e-voting machines, and so should Ireland.
Of all the arguments, the one I can't really respond to is the issue of the loss of the drama of the count. People either love this aspect of elections or hate it. Realistically, I don't think any final decision on using e-voting machines will ever rest on a nostalgia factor.
As for the machines being (or not being) hackable and vulnerable to being tampered with - this is a separate issue from whether they are on a network or connected to the internet.
They still run on software and would need to be programmed for any given election. I do agree that, conspiracy theorists aside, this form of tampering may be unlikely in a western democracy, but is not beyond the bounds of belief.
And why should a lower standard of security for such systems be accepted simply because no-one believes Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael have crack teams of hackers waiting to upload party- branded malware?
As for the widespread use of the machines in other countries - yes, this is true. But as evidence from more than a decade in the US proves, the current offerings are not infallible machines and have been so systematically problematical that many states have bought the machines only to write them off a few years later. There are myriad documented cases of votes not being registered at all and of the machines not working as expected.
The issue of a paper receipt is crucial for many voters - it is the one thing I heard most: "If there could just be a paper record of my vote . . ."
No-one is suggesting that such paper copies of ballots be allowed leave the polling station - their purpose is for cross-checking accuracy not as mementos. With paperless systems there's no record of any vote - no audit trail at all - so unless the machines go seriously wrong, voters and officials would be none the wiser. And, as we have all learned over the years, a handful of votes can swing an election, so people really do want to know their vote counts - and was counted.
On the pro e-voting side - one area in which the machines would be a great boon for Ireland's proportional registration/single transferrable vote system is that they could precisely manage the transfers to accurately represent second preferences. In a situation where a candidate's surplus is redistributed, use of an e-voting machine would enable all the candidate's second preferences to be tallied.
The surplus could be distributed in the exact proportions that the candidate received them - rather than haphazardly choosing a cluster of ballots.
There are also in-between solutions such as creating machine-readable ballots, so people might use the stupid old pencils but still benefit from a fast and accurate count provided by a machine reader.
My own position remains the same - yes, aim to move to an electronic system but let's get a reliable, auditable system before entrusting something as important as the electoral process to it.
Blog: www.techno-culture.com
