The proposed Irish e-voting system for this year's European and regional elections will undergo scrutiny by a group of independent experts who will look into
the system's alleged security flaws. A report is due out on 1 May, following which the government could decide to withdraw its plans. The group, called the 'Commission on electronic voting' has built a website which was made public today. The proposal, put forward last year by the
Irish government, drew furious criticism from civil liberties group and the opposition labour party about alleged security shortcomings. The Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-voting (ICTE) - a watchdog group made up of computing experts, academics and citizens - says the system does
not eliminate the risk of votes being recorded incorrectly. If this were to happen, whether because of flaws in the software or "by malicious intent", it says a recount would be impossible. ICTE therefore proposes that a paper ballot be produced by the machine to confirm individual polls so that voters can check that their choice has been recorded properly. The paper would then be placed in a separate
box for a possible future recount.
In the US, similar security doubts led the Pentagon to scrap its e-voting plans after experts concluded that the system posed a serious risk of election fraud. The experts even went as far as to say that Internet voting should not take place until both the Internet infrastructure or the personal computer were "fundamentally changed."
At EU level, the Commission recently organised a seminar on e-democracy as a follow-up to its September 2003 communication on e-government (see EurActiv's new, fully updated LinksDossier on e-government). Responding to EurActiv in january, an expert from Gallup Europe expressed doubts on the idea of online voting altogether (see EurActiv, 13 January 2004).
Links:
- Time-saving overview:
- LinksDossier: E-government
- Official documents:
- Irish Commission on Electronic Voting: Website
- Speech by Commissioner Liikanen: "Reinforcing eDemocracy" (12 February 2004)
- Commission: Communication on the role of e-government for Europe's future [FR] [DE] (26 September 2003)
