[E-voting] Questions in Dáil

[Colm MacCarthaigh]

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 06:05:26PM -0400, Aengus Lawlor wrote:
> I should add that the rate of "invalid votes" in the Dublin "e-voting 
> pilots" was 0.18%, twice the rate of "unstamped" ballot papers. We have 
> absolutely no information on how many of the 400 "invalid votes" were 
> deliberate on the part of the voter, or due to deliberate or inadvertant 
> action on the part of the poll workers.

It is a real problem. I was a ballot scrutineer in the 2002 general and
there was definitely a high number of ballot papers for Sinn Fein which
were unstamped. This almost certainly was not ballot stuffing, but
rather was more likely a personation officer not stamping the ballots of
likely Sinn Fein voters. 

But this problem is not mitigated by e-voting, where the officers at
the polling place can do far far more damage.

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