Electronic Voting

[Peadar]

Originally posted by Peadar
It is possible to have a receipt printer attached which could facilitate the paper trail .

The Minister seems to be against this...

"The Department of the Environment has ruled out the possibility of the Government altering its electronic voting plans to provide a paper record of every vote cast."

Full story BreakingNews.ie

[EireBadBoy]

Does this link help at all??

Black Box Voting

[Éanna]

Originally posted by Macy
My biggest problem is that there is no secret way of spoiling your paper. Add a "None of the Above" option then I'll generally be happy.

Yeah thats my main concern with it alright. Suppose just bring in a jug of water and pour it in the machine- that should spoil the ****in thing

[max power]

just don't vote...thats a nice easy way...or as a newspaper cartoon said at the weekend , vote with your feet and kick the sh*t out of the voting machine

[Shed End John]

Read in the Ireland on Sunday that Microsoft (makers of the system) reckon it won't hold up under the volume of votes to be cast. On the other hand, it will end the week long counts/recounts, which can only be a good thing.

[max power]

if a cash register can process 100,000 plus in sales in a day why can't one of these machines do their job correctly ????

its not bloody rocket science, its a record of what button i pressed ????

[Shed End John]

Originally posted by max power
if a cash register can process 100,000 plus in sales in a day why can't one of these machines do their job correctly ????

Ah, but that's €100k in sales, not 100k seperate transactions. Apparently, Microsoft reckon that their database package wasn't meant to be used in such fashion.

[max power]

what package is used in france/germany to process 60/70 million votes and has anyone been to germany to overlook their system in action ???

every polling station knows the maxium number of people that will be voting there, then should we not not know the maxium number of people that will be using the machine ???

[dahamsta]

It's not entirely clear which posts you're replying to max power. Or are you just ranting in general? You'll need to be more specific about the thread if you want people to address your comments.

adam

[John83]

Originally posted by dahamsta
It's not entirely clear which posts you're replying to max power. Or are you just ranting in general? You'll need to be more specific about the thread if you want people to address your comments.

He's on my ignore list, so it doesn't matter how specific he is to the point.

[max power]

if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

adam i was just wondering from what i heard on the news about germany/france doing in relation to e voting, i was not replying to any post in general.....


on the machine thing i was stating that each polling station has a list of voters and know the maxium amount of voters that will turn up, therefore it should be known the maxium number of votes a machine will have to process ??? not near 3,000,000....a couple of thousand i'd say ?????

[pete]

AFAIK the only MS s/w used is the Access Database.

Access is fine for the local butchers stock keeping ot whatever but I just don't trust 15 year old dutch s/w than hasn't dumped Access & moved with the times.

[dahamsta]

if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

Don't get dragged into flame wars please. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't talk to each other. Adulthood is a wonderful thing.

adam i was just wondering from what i heard on the news about germany/france doing in relation to e voting, i was not replying to any post in general.....

What were you wondering? If they're using Nedap/Powervote is it? Who cares? We're talking about the Irish system, which is substantially different to any other system because of our PR-STV voting system (the code for which was written not in Holland, but in the UK).

on the machine thing i was stating that each polling station has a list of voters and know the maxium amount of voters that will turn up, therefore it should be known the maxium number of votes a machine will have to process ??? not near 3,000,000....a couple of thousand i'd say ?????

The reason I don't get this one is that there doesn't seem to be a point. Are you trying to say extra votes will prove that the voting machines are working? (I'm not being smart, I just don't get you.)

adam

[dahamsta]

Originally posted by pete
AFAIK the only MS s/w used is the Access Database.

The operating system on the machines is Windows 98.

adam

[SÓC]

Does this system differ greatly from the one used in the last election in Dublin and Meath?

Dont remember hearing any problems with that one, well at least not technicial problems. They thought that the prodecure took away the excitment and stuff but still cant remeber any big fuss about it?

[dahamsta]

It's not useless Conor. At its most basic, it's a security mechanism for democracy. If anything should be secure, it's the ballot. Without VVAT, the ballot is simply not secure.

adam

[pete]

Originally posted by dahamsta
The operating system on the machines is Windows 98.

adam

LOL, & there was me thinking having Access bad enough on its own.

If the people "organising" this e-vote thing idiotic enough to use win 98 (dear god why???) as opposed to the so much more reliable win 2000 (not all MS products sh!te) then how can anyone trsut they know what they doing....

[Schumi]

I was wondering when someone would do that.

[John83]

Originally posted by dahamsta
if i'm on johns ignore list how ddi he reply to a post i did in another thread, is that sheep, pig no no its bullsh*t i smell..

Don't get dragged into flame wars please. If you don't want to talk to each other, don't talk to each other. Adulthood is a wonderful thing.

Simple, I clicked on the "view post anyway" (or whatever it's actually called) button.

None intended Adam. Out of sight, out of mind.

I have to back up the Windows 98 point - wtf are they doing? Even 95 would be better. I'm going to get disenfranchised when the bloody machine crashes on polling day.

[johnlambe]

Originally posted by Conor74
Checking a paper trail will mean, because of the STV system, that we NEVER get an accurate number of votes as, because of the random selection of votes in the transfer process, it is unlikely that the paper system will choose exactly the same votes as the machine.

You do not necessarily have to count all the VVAT paper ballots - you only have to compare them to the electronic record, one machine at a time (except that when there are very few votes cast on some machines, the votes from a few machines should be combined, for privacy reasons).

See http://evoting.jlambe.com/recommend/vvat.html.
(Here, I suggest procedures for conducting this comparison).

Since you would only be comparing a few hundred votes at a time, it is easy to get it right, and if a mistake is made in comparing them, you check them again until either they are found to match or it is clear that they do not match - after rechecking, you only have an unexplained discrepancy if the votes were actually recorded incorrectly.

Once the paper ballots have been compared to the electronic record, anyone could use count the published electronic list of votes themselves (using free open-source software, for example).

The solution to the random selection (for transfer of surplus) problem is simple: don't use random selection.
Random selection was used only because using pure PR-STV (which involves transferring fractions of votes, instead of randomly selecting votes) is complicated to do manually.
Using random selection makes no sense in an electronic system and the government intend to use pure PR-STV in the electronic system at a later stage anyway.