As long last... €51m e-voting machines to be disposed of

T

Towger

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It looks as if the gravy train for storing the e-voting machines is coming to an end. Time to ebay the evoting machines, the perfect item to have on display in every Irish themed pub around the world. Now is your chance to vote Bertie Ahern Number One. Remember, vote early and vote often.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1006/evoting.html
 
These machines were successfully used at Irish elections.

The idea behing them was good.

It is about time we brought in voting over the net.

It is a disgrace that in the 21st century - we still use bits of paper.

I don't see the attrraction of waiting for days for a result.
 
Would you trust a machine? Would you trust a system that produced no paper trail?
 
cork said:
It is a disgrace that in the 21st century - we still use bits of paper.
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Bertie .. ??

Is that you .. ??

:D

I, for one, have no issue with the current process. Technology is not always the answer.

Some people don't trust web/browser-based services for day to day banking, so how do we move from that attitude towards the discharge of the most important civic responsibility you have ?
 
I think that a lot of the criticism of the system was over-blown.

The system worked.

It was probably more accurate than manually counting and distributing surplus votes.

That said - it is a pity seeing public wastage of money.
 
My guess is that it will cost us about $10mil to get rid of them because the lease agreements for storing them won't expire for about another 10yrs! Am I blowing this out of proportion - well lets see.

....next stop the P Pars system - or has that already been taken care of?
 
ninsaga said:
....next stop the P Pars system - or has that already been taken care of?
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The PPARS system is being replaced by the same system used to pay teachers, as the government realised they already had a payroll system which could handle the much the same pay
structure/grades as used by the HSE.
 
OK, so I guess you don't know that the system worked last time. You don't know why there was a large discrepancy between the number of votes cast on the machine and the number of people who turned up to vote during the trial in Dublin North.

cork said:
We need a web based system.

The current system is slow & inefficent.

What happened to the public services broker?

Could this be used as a portal for eletronic voting?
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Any system that is not based on a private, individual ballot box in a central location would be a disaster. This would open the door to selling votes, and voting under duress.
 
Sure paper votes and waiting a few days is part of the fun :)

We can drag Brian Farrell out of retirement and watch the tallymen
 
Complainer said:
OK, so I guess you don't know that the system worked last time. You don't know why there was a large discrepancy between the number of votes cast on the machine and the number of people who turned up to vote during the trial in Dublin North.
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I don't remember this (may have been too young)

Do you have a link available?
 
cork said:
These machines were successfully used at Irish elections.

The idea behing them was good.

It is about time we brought in voting over the net.

It is a disgrace that in the 21st century - we still use bits of paper.

I don't see the attrraction of waiting for days for a result.
Click to expand...

Eh, they didn't work hence why they were never rolled out.

Plenty of other Countries with much bigger populations use bits of paper and hasn't done them any harm.
 
DB74 said:
I don't remember this (may have been too young)

Do you have a link available?
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From http://evoting.cs.may.ie/Documents/ElectronicVotingTestResults.doc


Dublin North

Election report​
Dail Election 2002 (North)​
Date of Poll: Friday 17 May 2002​
Dublin North​
2. Summary reconciliation of vote accounts
45236

43942


+1294


A Total number of votes cast on voting machines, as recorded by presiding officers (viz. number of postal and special votes cast on machines, plus number of votes who voted on voting machines at polling stations):
B Total number of votes cast on voting machines (including postal and special votes and "null" votes), as recorded on ballot modules:
C Discrepancy between figures at A and B:

 Finding

The pilot tests of the Powervote / Nedap system are inconclusive.

1.A number of votes were cast.
2.A number of votes were collected.
3.A set of results were declared.

No connection can be established between 1 and 3 other than the self defined results coming from the IES Count PC.

The official documents with the “Summary reconciliation of vote accounts” show major discrepancies.

The PC Count application crashed during the count.

The same problems occurred in both constituencies.

Mixing and numbering of votes was carried out twice. The statutory counting rules do not allow the mix to be disturbed after it is first carried out.
 
Yorky said:
In Monaghan a 25 year lease was granted to the nephew of the returning officer to store these machines in a shed... The fact that they're going to be disposed of will mean that we're paying the balance of this lease for nothing.
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That being the case then there is a conflict of interest & there is an ethics issue. There should be no penalties for cutting the lease & the returning officer should be brought to task. But what are the chances of that happening!

My guess is the the nephew is a Fianna Failer right?
 
Other countries (such as Finland if I'm not mistaken) use electronic voting systems. I don't recall that there is an issue with those systems per se. The electronic voting system that was used in Ireland was heavily criticised during its design phase by the Irish Computing Society. They said that there was no proper design specification issued for the equipment in the first case. In addition, they called for a paper-based auditing system (which wasn't included?). I can't find the link for this at the moment but this was back in 2004. It is possible to have electronic voting - but the original decision and specification was rushed through.
 
Thanks for that link - very interesting. I actually e-voted in Meath in 2002.

How do we know that the errors are due to the machines though rather than errors by the presiding officers?

Manual recounts often change the vote tallies but people seem to accept that human errors can occur.
 
cork said:
What happened to the public services broker?

Could this be used as a portal for eletronic voting?
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REACH? They spent too much time designing communication protocols and never got round to actually doing anything. When they did eventually get something up and running they found they had simply duplicated a pre-existing site (the citizens advice one).

Was canned last year I believe.

You can't recycle IT projects. If that's what you want create a new site from scatch, don't shoehorn it into a pre-existing failed solution.
 
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