Commission on Electronic Voting:methodology
The Commission on Electronic Voting was established by the Government on March 1st, 2004, to report to the Ceann Comhairle of the Dáil no later than today on the secrecy and accuracy of the Nedap/Powervote electronic voting system.
The establishment of the commission followed weeks of political controversy over the Government's plan to introduce the e-voting system throughout the State in the local government and European Parliament elections on June 11th. It was set up to deal with concerns, expressed by the opposition, about the reliability and secrecy of the system.
The commission both reviewed tests already carried out on the chosen system and ordered further tests.
It was assisted in its work by people and organisations with expertise in political science, computer science, public administration, audit, security and statistics.
The commission identified such experts and asked them to submit proposals as to the approach and activities they believed were appropriate to the commission.
It then commissioned these experts to provide reports on various aspects of the system, and these were supplied.
The findings of these reports are reflected in the report published yesterday. The full expert reports will be published later.
The commission obtained samples of the hardware and software components of the system from the Department of the Environment, as well as documentation relating to the past use of the system in Ireland.
It also reviewed the procedural guidelines issued to returning officers and other election personnel, examined the system's operating manuals and carried out a risk analysis of the system.
It placed newspaper and radio advertisements seeking submissions from the public in relation to its mandate to examine the secrecy, accuracy and testing of the chosen system.
Some 162 submissions were received by post, e-mail and online at the commission's website. These are expected to be published later.
The main themes of the submissions were the need for a voter-verified paper audit trail; the need to preserve the right to secrecy of someone casting a blank vote; the need to ensure the versions of the hardware and software used in the election are the ones that have been tested; the need for the software to be open to allow the wider community check that it can produce accurate results; and the need to run the new system in parallel with the old one, to ensure results are accurate.
Mark Brennock