[wordup] Electronic voting in Ireland encounters criticism

[Adam Shand]

Via: politech at politechbot.com

From: "adam beecher" <lists at spamfilter.cc>
To: "Dave Farber" <dave at farber.net>, "Declan McCullagh" <declan at well.com>
Subject: Electronic voting in Ireland
Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 21:45:25 +0100

Hi Declan, Dave,

Both of you have posted commentary on electronic voting on your lists
recently and in the past, I thought the message below might be of 
interest to your subscribers.

I don't strictly agree with Margaret's goals, in that I don't object to
Nedap/Powervote specifically, but more the lack of oversight and
transparency; nor do I object to products developed outside of Ireland 
being used here if the attributes mentioned above are present. But I do 
believe very strongly that all electronic voting in Ireland should be 
suspended until we know a hell of a lot more. Full source disclosure 
should be a prerequisite.

Elections have already taken place using this equipment in some
constituencies in Ireland, and our Government has made it clear that 
they intend implenting it across the board at our next major election, 
which takes place next year. Just like most other countries, public 
services in Ireland tend to plod along, and changes can take years, even 
decades, to take hold. Needless to say, the speed with which this has 
been implemented is raising eyebrows.

The Irish Government passed a data retention directive last year*, in a
Cabinet meeting with no oversight from even the members of their own
parties. This happened before European legislation was fully drafted, 
and has raised objections and even threats of legal proceedings from our 
own Data Protection Commissioner. In light of this, you don't need to be 
a conspiracy theorist to start drawing ugly conclusions.

adam

* http://radio.weblogs.com/0103966/2003/05/26.html#a2327

-----Original Message-----
From: iiu-admin at taint.org [mailto:iiu-admin at taint.org]On Behalf Of
Margaret McGaley
Sent: 28 May 2003 19:35
To: ilug at linux.ie; e-voting at lists.stdlib.net; iiu at taint.org;
SAGE-Announce at SAGE.ORG; sares at redbrick.dcu.ie; gliceas at redbrick.dcu.ie
Subject: [IIU] [E-voting] Electronic voting

To whom it may concern,

E-voting poses a threat to our democracy. This is my conclusion after 5
months of research into the topic for my undergraduate thesis. My 
results are available online at

           http://minds.cs.may.ie/~lovelace/E-Voting/index.shtml

I hope to mount a campaign over the next few months with the following
goals:

- to prevent the use of the Nedap/Powervote system in Irish elections,
- to prevent the purchase of any more equipment or software from
   Nedap/Powervote by the Irish government, and
- to convince the government that any electronic voting system used
   in this country should be developed here, using formal methods[1]
   and the Mercuri method[2], and should be open source.

If you would be interested in getting involved in such a campaign, or 
have any advice/comments, please contact me at

           Margaret.McGaley at Redbrick.DCU.IE

or join (or mail) the mailing list

           e-voting at lists.stdlib.net

by going to

           http://lists.stdlib.net/mailman/listinfo/e-voting

Please forward this mail to anyone you think may be interested.

Thanks,
Margaret McGaley

[1],[2] these terms are further explained on the website cited above

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