WHERE'S THE COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS?

[Margaret McGaley]

[FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE]

WHERE'S THE COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS?

Irish Citizens for Trustworthy Evoting (ICTE) is calling on Minister 
Roche to justify his intention to spend more money on the chosen 
electronic voting system. "It has been reported today that the minister 
will be seeking the advice of international experts on changes to the 
count software. But what about the other changes called for by the 
commission?" said Margaret McGaley of ICTE.

"If you just read the executive summary of the report, you might 
reasonably get the impression that the only significant piece of work is 
the reimplementation of the election management software. Only when you 
read the details do you see that both hardware and software changes are 
required for the voting machines as well." said Michael McMahon.

"Investments of millions of euros must be justified by the benefits they 
will bring. There has been no justification of this system either on the 
basis of cost savings or on the basis of improving democracy. We predict 
that just buying enough machines to make this
system viable will cost 35 million euro. By the time you add the cost of 
the changes called for by the CEV's report, the future cost of this 
system will be at least 50 million on top of the almost 60 million 
already spent. And that doesn't even include the personnel costs of 
running the system; these machines require more people than the paper 
system does. Can the minister prove that this system is worth all that 
expense?" concluded Ms McGaley.



[ENDS]

[Note for editors]

Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-voting is an independent group of over 
one hundred concerned Citizens, IT & Security Practitioners, and Legal 
Professionals calling for the introduction of a Voter Verified Audit 
Trail with any E-voting system used in Ireland.

ICTE Website:
http://evoting.cs.may.ie/

Archive of ICTE Press Releases:
http://lists.stdlib.net/pipermail/e-voting_press/

contact (available for interview): Margaret McGaley
email: mmcgaley at cs.nuim.ie
phone: 087 755 4023

contact (available for interview): Dermot Casey
email: Dermot.Casey at ge.com
phone: 085 148 1832


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