E-voting machines to be scrapped

cork said:

Why you can bank online but not vote is beyond me.

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One simple reason - to protect the secrecy of the ballot.

Towger said:

The fact it used MS Access was what stood out in my memory. It is stated in the report MS Accress was used, but reading it in more detail seems to imply it did not use MS Accress, but rather a Delphi front end accessing the JET Database Engine through an DAO interface.

In any event the killer was that fact that they specified machines without printers and it was not ecomic to retrofit them.

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Yeah. Maybe I had a very simplified vision of how these things should work but I always thought that there should be a print out given to the voter to check and place this in a ballot box. The ballot box could be used alongside the electronic result for a while until people trusted the system

cork said:

Why you can bank online but not vote is beyond me.

Manually counting votes is the stuff of dark ages.
With PPS/Public Services Broker/ etc - eletronic voting should happen again.

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Complainer said:

One simple reason - to protect the secrecy of the ballot.

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Just to expand on this now that I have a little bit more time.

A banking transaction is intrinsically linked to a person. The whole system revolves around transactions linked to an account or person. The audit trails will be based around individual accounts.

A voting environment is completely different. In order to protect the secrecy of the ballot, it is essential that the vote when cast cannot be linked to the voter in any way. The vote must be anonymous.

There is also the contradictory requirement for traceability. It must be possible to show in an open and transparent manner that the vote count has been fair and accurate.

Also, any online voting facility would open up options for duress voting (where an individual is forced under threat to vote in a certain way) or vote selling. The simple booth in the polling station offers complete protection by ensuring that only one person is allowed in the booth when voting is happening.

But the real question isn't 'can we do eVoting' - the real question is 'should we do eVoting' - what benefits will arise?

Mel said:

Ah now!! it's also "a particular procedure or set of procedures" as in a software develpment procedure perhaps?

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If you say so but linguistically its an anachronism with a questionble upside for market valuations of brassicas.

Complainer said:

... The simple booth in the polling station offers complete protection by ensuring that only one person is allowed in the booth when voting is happening...

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What neither system addressed is the v-Voter beloved of Fianna Fail. The Virtual Voter or v-Voter, who died or moved to a different constituency, continued to vote "early and often" on behalf of the Soldiers of High-Density Housing and acted as a meeter-and-greeter in the Snake Oil Tent and othe rubber chicken venues.

mathepac said:

What neither system addressed is the v-Voter beloved of Fianna Fail. The Virtual Voter or v-Voter, who died or moved to a different constituency, continued to vote "early and often" on behalf of the Soldiers of High-Density Housing and acted as a meeter-and-greeter in the Snake Oil Tent and othe rubber chicken venues.

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Indeed, though in fairness, FF aren't the only ones to have benefited from these. I heard Joe McCarthy (who spend in the order of €4k of his own money on FOI requests on the dodgy eVoting system) making the point that if they spent half as much money on sorting the register as they did on the machines, we would be far better off.

Complainer said:

Indeed, though in fairness, FF aren't the only ones to have benefited from these. I heard Joe McCarthy (who spend in the order of €4k of his own money on FOI requests on the dodgy eVoting system) making the point that if they spent half as much money on sorting the register as they did on the machines, we would be far better off.

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Excellent and rarely raised point. That we don't have a centralised register is a joke. I'm registered to vote in three different constituencies despite writing to innumerable offices in an attempt to get the matter rectified.

mathepac said:

If you say so but linguistically its an anachronism with a questionble upside for market valuations of brassicas.

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http://www.answers.com/topic/methodology

We can agree to disagree, but languages aren't static (adj., Having no motion; being at rest; quiescent; Fixed; stationary.)
Pretentious management/ marketing lingo it may be, but it's how the word often tends to be used and understood and it's the comprehension of the word by the listener that is key in linguistics.

Niallers said:

I'd buy one if they were going cheap

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I'd guess you'd pick one up for half nothing, going on previous fire sales . . when they splurged on e-voting machines they sold off the 1000's of wooden ballot boxes at local auctions, many lots for €1 per box - to be used as plant pots and firewood . . and didn't Willie O'Dea swap a job lot of helicopters for some magic beans?

Anyway announcing that they are to be scrapped and actually implementing it are two different things. Gormley, despite his many protestations, has delivered very little.