The introduction of electronic voting in all elections in the Republic has only been delayed, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, has insisted despite security concerns voiced by an independent commission. Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, reports.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday, following a meeting with the Slovenian Prime Minister, Mr Anton Rop, Mr Ahern insisted that public confidence in electronic voting "is extremely high".
"There is definitely a sense of disappointment. There was a high satisfaction with it. The pilot tests worked extraordinarily well," he declared.
The Taoiseach's defence of electronic voting will come as a boost to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, who has been sharply criticised in recent days for his decision to spend €50 million on over 6,000 voting machines.
The Taoiseach's intervention came as it emerged that California has abandoned plans to use a different form of electronic voting in elections this year involving two million voters in the autumn.
"We set up the Commission on Electronic Voting. We now have to satisfy it. This is a deferment, this is a delay. It's nothing else," Mr Ahern declared.
The Government cancelled plans to use electronic voting in the local and European Parliament elections in June following the report of the commission, headed by Mr Justice Matthew P. Smith. The commission is understood to believe that a paper record of each vote cast electronically would have to be kept if the public is to have confidence in the system.
However, Mr Ahern disagreed, insisting that it made little sense to have an electronic voting system operating in parallel to an old-fashioned paper one.
The plan to introduce Nedap/Powervote machines in all of the Republic's polling booths on June 11th ran into trouble, he claimed, because opponents voiced criticism too late. "There was no talk whatever about this before Christmas," he said, adding that "many of the people who became national figures on the back of it" had not then made their complaints directly to the Government.
"We have to make sure that we answer the questions raised. We have to make sure that sufficient time is given to it. What happened here is that we ran out of time."
He said that he had "no doubt that if the debate that took place this year had taken place two years ago" then the doubts raised could have been dealt with.
"I am sure that if I put my head into the middle of an ATM machine for six weeks, I would probably be convinced that the ATM machine was robbing me of my money," he declared.
Despite Mr Ahern's claim, it is clear from publicly-available records from the main lobby group, Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-Voting, that its campaign against began last summer.
In California, the secretary of state, Mr Kevin Shelley, banned electronic voting in four of the state's counties, saying that the lack of a paper trail made e-voting unreliable.
On Friday, an expert group in California recommended the imposition of the ban in four counties, and cleared the way for its use in other counties if voters were given the choice of a paper ballot.
However, a motion is to go before the Californian state legislature on Wednesday that could see touch-screen voting banned everywhere in the state for the November election.