E-voitng given thumbs down

by Kilcullen head Fri Apr 30, 2004 13:39

Can't wait to see that ****er (insert your own expletive) Cullen squirm his way, out of this one.

by Anti-idiotarian Fri Apr 30, 2004 13:48

Fantastic!! That means the idea has been killed off for at least until the end of the government's current term.

by Pat Paterson Fri Apr 30, 2004 13:54

Great, I can now write a slogan on my ballot paper in the Local Elections as there are no decent candidates

This is how I'm voting
Locals: Slogan like "No to Bin Tax, down with capitalism!"
Euro: Joe Higgins No. 1, no transfer
Referendum: No.

by observer Fri Apr 30, 2004 13:58

Because you will be wasting your time:)))

by kokomero Fri Apr 30, 2004 14:56

hopefully the other "great" government idea, the referendum on citizenship rights, will follow Cullen's e-voting system down the same plug-hole!

by Voter Fri Apr 30, 2004 15:05

If the commission has problems with the electronic voting for the June elections/referendum, what does that mean for the Nice Treaty referendum and the 2002 elections in Dublin North, West and Meath? Are these results now open for questioning?


I was very glad to see that Cullen was the man that had to squirm away from his plans, this fecker was the man that sent 22 people to prison for opposition to his bin tax and he's an arrogant bastard.

By the way, for the Anarchist who says we should just stay in bed on election day. I don't think we should, people should come out and votes against the racist referendum and vote to reject the parties and candidates of big business. Elections wont change society but where's the harm in using your vote to register a protest?

by John Fri Apr 30, 2004 16:48

This is the most ridiculous decision ever. FF should ignore the Luddites in this absurd commission and introduce e-voting as soon as possible. Thanks to this commission Ireland will once again be the last country to return results for the June 11 election. All other countries will have their counts completed for the EU parliament on the Sunday night of the election. Ireland wont even begin the count until the Monday morning and, if its a close contest, it wont be finished until Christmas. In mid-August RTE will still be going over for live broadcasts of the 400th recount in some obscure rural constituency to see if the candidate of the Socialist Looney party has edged past that of the Green Fruitcake party for the last seat. Bits of paper will peered at under a microscope by handwriting experts to see if its a 12th preference or a 17th preference. Yet simple secure technology can do the count accurately in 5 minutes. What a waste of money taking all these teachers, nurses, policemen away from their normal jobs and paying them ridiculous sums to count bits of paper for days on end. Every other country in the world is heading in the direction of electronic voting, even India has just introduced it. In 10 years Ireland will be the only country that still counts bits of paper and takes weeks to so, if the Luddites have their way. If they are so against modern technology, why dont they campaign against electronic cash machines, bring back manual counting of money by bank cashiers. After all, the software used for these machines could quite easily be nobbled, and all your money transferred to the FF bank account.

by Dermot L Fri Apr 30, 2004 16:51

"...to see if the candidate of the Socialist Looney party..."


Please tell me there's a party of that name!

Another embarrassment for a man and a government who shame us all all the time. Resign!

by OK Fri Apr 30, 2004 17:01

Maybe if the Socialist Looney Party (SLP) got in they would not be wasting money on crappy e-voting while his department pushed ahead with non-collection of rubbish. He could have saved more cash if he did not jail 22 activists during the Autumn.

I'm happy to see the Bin Tax Minister squirm.

by O Bin Unladen Fri Apr 30, 2004 17:54

Bin the Min, he hasn't a clue.

I wouldn't let him manage a one cubicle public toilet. He is a complete disaster. Shame it cost €40 million to hang him out to dry.

Actually, keep him 'til July, Bertie. Himself and Bev 'the banker' Flynn will cost FFers precious votes all over the country... except for Mayo, gawd help us. Another rotten borough, like Lowry's bit of Tipp.

by jc Sat May 01, 2004 07:02

What people need to bear in mind is that electronic voting can be safe.

Its needs to be an open source code first of all(So we can see exactly what everything does in the program).

It needs to have a paper back up so it can be crossed checked if need be.

The japanese system gives the user a paper ballot and then user uses a machine to register their vote which prints it to the ballot .

The user can then visualy see whats on the ballot and then put in the box.

so the machine has a note of it and you have a verified paper back up.

unfortunatly with the governments messing around on this people wont trust any evoting system.

I'd like Martin cullens Head on a platter please!

by John Sat May 01, 2004 11:35

These are red herrings. The company manufacturing this software is hoping to sell it worldwide. Which it will do, as there are not so many Luddites in other countries as in Ireland. No way are they going to release it to be copied by a rival. I write software that is sold worldwide. The last thing we will do is release it for all and sundry to see, including commercial rivals. The people who ask for this are under the impression Bertie Ahern has written the software himself. Its a reputable company, and no way will they sell software that doesn't work. If I was them I'd sue these Election Commission clowns, and they may well do so. But, even if they did release it for all to see, the Luddites would then claim the software actually in the machine was different from that which the public had been shown. As for the paper trail,
same thing. The Luddites would claim that the vote registered internally in the machine was different to that printed out. Its the lot of those who introduce modern technology to be assailed by Luddites claiming it wont work. Look at Brunel. In 20 years Martin Cullen will be seen as simply ahead of his time, too far advanced for the more dimwitted sections of Irish society. People will look back and think 'did we really ban these machines in those days, god how primitive we were'. Much like the way people today look back on the days when the Pill was banned in Ireland.

by Sensible Sat May 01, 2004 13:06

John,

And are you the e-voting manufactuers salesman?

You obviously know zero about anything technical and are completely and utterly naive to think, that the political parties will not at some point or at least the real people running the State, large corporations and connected political and wealthy individuals, try to interfere and tamper with the electronic vote.

There are say many ways it can be done, it simply a joke. And I think I can add some credibility to that since I have 15 years of writing software.

Why don't you go and have a good read of this:

"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/020203G.voting.mach.htm

by rd Sat May 01, 2004 13:18

The people handling the voting process may be perfectly honest and ethical, etc. but the point is that the process has to be above board, and be SEEN to be above board, and since the person in the polling booth cannot see what is happening as they can do with the paper system, the e-voting system does not match those criteria.

by iosaf Sat May 01, 2004 14:49

an election on only 4,000,000€.
in less than 100 hours.

There are serious problems with the voting system, in today's cyber age, of TV saturation, it is very difficult to argue that the voter has the sufficient "calm" and "space" to consider the issues and not just soundbites, to judge a candidate and not just a media image, which was the reservations first made about extending sufferage in the XIX century.

We need only look back to Nicuragua, to the end of the FSLN, [the 1980s] correctly identified by Naomi Klein amongst others as the situation which politicised many of the present generation of "movers and shakers" (the one's that are awating the generation of Bertie/Pat/Mary/Micheal to go out to grass, even go onto grass, hasish anything that calms them down, just stay away from the nosey stuff).
Reagan's adminstration, which for obvious Common Sense reasons, no-one could take seriously, (why then have they taken any White House administration seriously?) not only filled Nicuragua with mercenaries, but also regular troops, advisors, the whole infernal kit, and then accross several weeks dropped WW1 style, propaganda leaflets on the mosquito infested hills and bought the election from illiterate people who had never seen a propaganda leaflet drop before.

The Result was the price of coffee.

by rd Sat May 01, 2004 15:03

The correct spelling is 'Nicaragua'. However I agree with what you are saying.
At least I can understand your comment this time, some of your other comments are incoherent, which just pisses people off. Keep things clear.

by jeff Sat May 01, 2004 15:23

You did say one time that you work with computers, so I think there is a bit of bias there...

There is a ton of documented evidence saying that people have problems with the reliability of e voting, in the context of its use in elections...

A glitch in the system could, in theory, do more damage than any one mistake in traditional ballots.

by John Sat May 01, 2004 16:04

Sensible, congratulations on achieving 15 years of software writing. I've done 32. What you are saying is conspracy theory claptrap. Even the web site you gave states 'Odds are both won fair and square'. For a political party to fiddle the results under electronic voting would require a conspiracy involving hundreds of people from all political backgrounds, including scores working in the company involved in producing the software. If even one of them blew the whistle on it, that political party would be finished. If they were that desperate, they could just as easily fiddle the results under the manual system. Simply replace ballot boxes with fake votes when they are stored in schools etc overnight pending the count. I do believe this software comes from a company in Holland. Do you think FF have infiltrated dozens of programmers into the software writing team over there, so as to guarantee victory on June 11. Anyway let Ireland languish in the 20th century if it wants. The rest of the world will move forward into the 21st. By the time of the Euro elections in 2014, almost all other EU countries will have adopted electronic voting and instantaneous results. How primitive Ireland is going to seem with its week-long count. Electronic voting enhances democracy, by allowing much more frequent elections and referenda, as a result of not having to recruit 1000s of people for a week-long count. In 20 years time there will be weekly referenda with people voting from their own homes and the results tabulated within minutes. The people will be consulted 100 times more than today thanks to modern technology. Is Ireland planning to be left behind in this revolution?

by sb Sat May 01, 2004 16:22

There is a free voting system but it really just a toy as all these e voting systems are, they can never be secure.

http://www.free-project.org/users/

by John Sat May 01, 2004 18:00

Hi Jeff, nice to hear from you again. Can I refer you to the following web site:

wwww.rediff.com/computer/1998/Feb/20polls

where you will find the following:

The electronic voting machine strikes at the hearts of India's fiercest demons, corruption and poverty.

T O D A Y
• Vote for Buttonji
• Infosys stumped
• Aptech diversifies
• VXL redoes strategy
India is, at once, the world's largest democracy and a poor country. Frequent national elections entail horrendous costs of transporting and guarding ballot boxes, printing thousands of tonnes of ballot paper and then hiring staff for counting them.

The voting machines reduce these costs dramatically. And because they are tamperproof, they snip political corruption in the bud. At the voting stage itself. Rigging is next to impossible.

I hope you are not suggesting that Irish people would have problems using these machines while Indians would not.

by ron - sp Sat May 01, 2004 22:47

the electronic voting demonstration roadshow was in limerick on friday. the socialist party printed up a small bundle of leaflets to distribute highlighting the 1200 missing votes from the e-vote in Dublin North in the last general election.
(unfortunately) just an hour before we were to hit the street with our leaflets, the government announced that they were pulling the plug on electronic voting for this election.
the e-vote roadshow promptly packed up and went home!

read Clare Daly's press statement from 16/4/04
http://www.socialistparty.net/press/pressevotingcoverup16-04-04.htm

by O Bin Unladen Sun May 02, 2004 00:06

Just read the Commission's report... then replay M Cullen's speeches on this issue.

For the conspiracy theorists, consider this... the verdict/decision was meant to be announced at/after the Cabinet meeting next Tuesday... so why do you suppose they went with it early? Because they wanted it buried by the May 1st Euro 'panem et circences' (as they used to be called in Roman times) and the long weekend.

Cullen's future will depend on whether everyone's forgotten this debacle come Tuesday. Bertie, sack him, you know he's an incompetent idiot.

E-voting isn't a bad thing, per se, but it should never be run by a politician and the software should be commissioned by and owned by the people of Ireland.