[E-voting] Legal challenge

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Wed, Jan 19, 2005 at 02:51:42PM -0800, Ciaran Quinn wrote:
> Has the time come to prepare for a legal challenge to the system?

That can only take place when the Minister has signed an order
for its use. But yes, the time has come for us to start properly
preparing the case, so that it can be presented to the high-court.

There is currently a Judicial Review to the Electoral Amendment Act
itself brought by Denis Riordan pending a hearing, but I don't think
that will be succesful. The Act itself is merely enabling legislation,
so it is the issuance of an order which we would contend it
unconsitutional.

> Is there anyone with legal expertise (some future rainbow coalition
> Attorney General perhaps?) to give an opinion on the merits of a
> challenge?

It's anyones guess really as to the likelyhood of success, but the argument
is:

	Electronic Voting without VVAT is provably and categorically
	subject to undetectable hardware fraud and error. 

	The only form of hardware testing which could remedy this is
	a full, destructive, forensic analysis - something which is
	not being proposed.

	All prior software testing is irrelevant, as it is fundamentally
	and provably impossible to verify that any particular version
	of software running is the same as that which has undergone
	testing.

	This would of course all have to be backed up with expert
	opinion.

The Government side would likely try to make it a pragmatic case
concerning likelyhoods. Saying that it is not very likely these kind of
things would occur and so on, whereas we contend that risks are more
important. And that the risk, no matter how low (and it is really is not
very low), is that every constituency could be affect - completely
undetectably. 

The dangers of setting a precedent of using a system for which it is
categorically impossible to verify the result are extremely clear. But
whether this translates into an injunction would depend on how well its
argued, the quality of opinion and so on.

-- 
Colm MacCárthaigh                        Public Key: colm+pgp at stdlib.net