Electronic voting should only go ahead when there is an audit facility in place, the Ombudsman, Ms Emily O'Reilly, has said. There may be merit in postponing its introduction until after the local elections, she said.
There were serious public concerns over the new system and these must be addressed before it was rolled out nationally, she told The Irish Times. While stressing she had no role in the matter she said "I think the fact that the Government appeared to do a U-turn during the week in relation to it means that they are going to do that." Ms O'Reilly was referring to the decision to appoint an independent statutory panel to verify the security of the system in advance of the elections.
"I can understand the argument that if you have a receipt for everybody, then think of the logistical problems that that can throw up, you might as well just stick to the old way. The fact is that huge concern has been raised. I think it would be absolutely wrong to go for a system which did not have the trust and confidence of the people because the most important thing that you do is elect a Government."
Speaking to The Irish Times at an American Chamber of Commerce lunch in Dublin, Ms O'Reilly said debate about electronic voting had grown in recent weeks to such an extent that the possibility of postponing its introduction could not be dismissed.
"I know a number of people have been saying that perhaps it would be put back. I mean, is it going to damage anything if we don't have it for the local elections? I think we've still got a few spare ballot papers around that we can use. Surely the most important thing is trust and confidence.
"If there is no way of verifying the vote, then people are going to be concerned about that. Obviously in other countries they are not concerned, they trust the software. And in this computer age we have to trust software all over the place. But I think the issue is confidence of the people. I think this debate, which was a fairly narrowly focused debate, has now become almost a national debate. You are going to have to explore what sort of confidence building measures can be put in place and some kind of audit is going to have to [be used\]."
After the Government announced the establishment of the independent statutory panel, the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, said electronic voting would be in place in time for June's local elections.
He said paper records were not kept in any jurisdiction where electronic voting was used, including California. Paper record-keeping was impractical because printers would break down under heavy use.
Meanwhile, Ms O'Reilly said her office was witnessing a fall-off in the level of information being sought under the Freedom Of Information Act since the introduction of fees last year. She said appeals received in January were down about 50 per cent on the same period last year, mirroring the overall trend.
Her office was already investigating the impact of amendments to the legislation, including charges. The results would be available in June.
She suspected some Departments and other bodies were now charging search and retrieval fees which they had not charged before. "Now there's nothing wrong with that. But I really want to see what's happening and as part of the investigation I've asked the officials to go and look and ask Departments to produce figures for what did you charge for search and retrieval last year and what are you doing this year."
