[E-voting] Today's Irish Times

[Joe McCarthy]

The Minister's proposal of a "peer review group (drawn from 
international electoral reform bodies and the IT industry) to supervise 
any software redesign work" is just a stop-gap exercise to postpone 
matters until after the next election. This will be another 
non-statutory expensive delaying mechanism.

The CEV called for an independent statutory electoral commission (R.41 
on page 206).

This is a very comprehensive recommendation to subsume the current 
oversight vested in the Deparment, the CEV and other commissions such as 
the Standards in Public Office, the Referendum and the Constituency 
Commissions.

No public debate has taken place on the need for electronic voting in 
the first place.

We have been presented with a fait accompli which turns out to be 
fatally flawed.

We should not even indulge in discussing the composition or merits of 
the review group until agreement is reached on the need for electronic 
voting in the first place.

The CEV itself said "the breadth and complexity of the issues that have 
arisen in the Commission’s work suggest that no electoral administration 
anywhere has so far really come to terms with all of the issues raised 
by the introduction of electronic systems in place of paper voting systems."

I have now come to the view that electronic voting for STV can never be 
implemented safely. While it is possible that electronic counting may 
have some merit, I believe the cost benefit case will be negative.

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Joe