Madam, - Mr O'Toole and Mr Tangney suggest in their article on electronic voting (April 6th) that the electronic tally data should be published on the internet. They have not realised that publishing the electronic tallies makes it easy to buy and sell votes. For example, in a 12-candidate STV election there are 479 million ways of voting 1 to 12. All that is needed for one person to buy another's vote is for the buyer and seller to agree on a set of preferences. The electronic tally will prove whether the seller voted as agreed. The chances of anyone else using the same combination of preferences is so small that it can be discounted.
It is for this reason that the Department of the Environment is planning to release only a sample of the votes after the forthcoming elections in June.
We were told that electronic voting would mean the end of the random selection of votes. In fact, we are only going to be allowed see a random selection of votes in future. - Yours, etc.,
CIARAN QUINN, Marino Court, Fairview Avenue Lower, Dublin 3.