[E-voting] E-voting/e-counting chaos in scotland (fwd)

[Catherine Ansbro]

Thanks for that, Jason
(I deleted your personal contact info in case you didn't mean for this 
to go to the whole e-group.)

It is shocking if there is no way the rejected ballots can be examined 
so that problems can be solved (and votes counted wherever 
possible--duh).  Why the shortage of details about this?  Aren't the 
political parties interested, given the closeness of the election?

It is also shocking that Scotland has permitted the use of an e-voting 
system that links ballots to voters.  Was no one sounding an alarm about 
this?

Catherine

Jason Kitcat wrote:
>
> On 16 May 2007, at 10:22, Catherine Ansbro wrote:
>> From the description of the layout-related counting problems (people 
>> using numbers instead of X and vice-versa), perhaps many of these 
>> would not have been spoiled if they had been counted by hand right 
>> from the start.  E.g., an X instead of a 1 would have been clear at 
>> least for a first-preference vote--I don't know what the Scottish 
>> rules are regarding counting votes where the intent was clear.  Same 
>> if someone had used a 1 instead of an X.
>>
>> Have there been no more recent stories describing the nature of the 
>> spoiled ballots?  Is anyone in the UK looking into this?
>
> Unless a petition is made to an Election Court (High Court in England, 
> Court of Session in Scotland) then the ballot papers, for 
> parliamentary elections at least, cannot be revealed. The law is this 
> way because UK ballots are not anonymous - they have a number which is 
> linked to the voter's entry on the electoral roll.
>
> For the local elections in Scotland (which were STV) the Scottish 
> government are currently consulting on whether to release some or all 
> of the ballots in an anonymised form for analysis. Unfortunately these 
> weren't the ballots with the high spoil rates (as far as I'm aware as 
> of today) so while interesting any such release wouldn't shed light on 
> the controversial issues at hand.
>
> All the best,
> Jason
>
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