[E-voting] Minimum requirement to juge voting "technology"

[Timothy Murphy]

On Friday 10 September 2004 19:26, Dr J Pelan wrote:

> > Were there constituencies where postal voting was the only option?
>
> Yes. Against the advice of many experts and lay people, the UK government
> mandated postal voting in four *regions*.
> o http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3796439.stm

OK. I knew this had been suggested, but thought it had been over-ruled.

Actually, I think it is quite a good idea.
The reported misdemeanours seemed pretty minor to me ...

Elections in ths UK used to be completely corrupt with "rotten boroughs"
as satirised by Dickens,
but the governments they produced were pretty good on the whole.
Tony Blair is a re-incarnation of Gladstone, maybe with something missing.

I don't think the strength of democracies lies in the accuracy of the voting.
Of course if a large part of the population loses faith in the system,
for whatever reason, that is a grave development.
That is why I am in favour of VVAT.

In my view the greatest danger to western democracy
is that the numbers taking part may drop so far
that the military, or whoever, can claim
that the parliament does not represent the people.

I think one can get too worked up about small discrepancies.
Maybe the wrong party won in the last US presidential election.
But if 49.9% vote one way and 51.1% the other
then effectively it is a tie.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland