The Government has been thrown a life-line by the conditional approval given to its election machines by the Commission on Electronic Voting. Having spent an estimated €52 million on computer hardware, in addition to annual storage fees of €700,000, the system is unusable. The cost is growing. But it might be possible to rescue the situation and use the machines if new and secure software can be designed.
The injuries suffered by the Government in this instance have been wholly self-inflicted. From the time the former minister for the environment, Noel Dempsey, secured Cabinet approval for the introduction of electronic voting back in 1999, reasonable public concerns and questions by computer experts concerning the security of the system were dismissed as trouble-making. His successor, Martin Cullen, ignored the views of an Oireachtas committee that suggested delay in buying the machines. And the reservations of Opposition parties were brushed aside by the Government's gung-ho approach.
Its inflexible attitude was punctured only in 2004 when the Commission on Electronic Voting reported that it was easy to bypass security measures in the proposed system and to gain control of constituency counts. There has been no hint of an apology to voters from the Government since then.
Instead, Dick Roche, the current Minister for the Environment, cherry-picked from the commission's report this week to justify the Government's behaviour. And he minimised the flaws remaining in the proposed electronic voting system. It was a case of "moving on" and forgetting about past mistakes and misjudgments.
This is not good enough. The credibility and transparency of the casting and counting of votes is the cornerstone of any democracy. A dangerously insecure electronic voting system was almost inflicted on this State by a negligent Government.
The commission has not given a clean bill of health to electronic voting. Certainly, it found the voting machines will probably be safe to use, following minor modifications. But the election management software, the very brains of the system, will have to be rewritten from scratch. The entire system will then have to be rigorously tested. As things stand, the old paper-based system is better.
Electronic voting, properly handled, might have modernised the voting system and encouraged the participation of citizens at a time of falling turnouts in elections. Instead of that, it has threatened the integrity of the secret ballot of the citizen.