Madam, - Louis Power (May 18th) misses an important difference when he points out that there was no dispute about the result of the Indian election, which was carried out electronically. There is little scope for corrupting the vote in a first-past-the-post system such as India's.
The result cannot vary much from the results of simple exit polls. With a PR system such as ours, cheating might involve subtle changes to the preferences which could never have been detected by comparisons with any exit poll. The result of general elections in this country could easily be altered by small changes to preferences in a few constituencies. I don't think this point was emphasised enough in the recent debate on electronic voting. - Yours, etc.,
TIM O'HALLORAN, Ferndale Road, Dublin 11.