According to a report in the Irish Times, Michael Noonan, chairman of the Dail Public Accounts Committee, said that he doubted whether the current system would ever be introduced following the debacle last year where plans to initiate e-voting were scrapped over security concerns. Noonan made his comments ahead of an inquiry into expenditure on the e-voting initiative. Officials from the Department of Environment are due before the committee on Thursday to answer criticisms over the introduction of the scheme.
The government was due to introduce e-voting at local and European elections on 11 June 2004 but had to abandon its plans following the publication of an interim report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting (ICTE) which raised doubts over the accuracy of the software used in the system.
According to the ICTE submission, the chosen Nedap/Powervote electronic voting system had a fundamental design flaw because it had no mechanism to verify that votes would be recorded accurately in an actual election. Consequently, results obtained from the system could not be said to be accurate, claimed the five-member independent body.
Other flaws in the system identified in the ICTE submission included possible software errors and the use of the graphical user interface programming language Object Pascal for a safety-critical system.
Although the commission's remit was advisory, the government abided by its recommendation that the system not be used until further testing had established just how secure it was.
However, Michael Noonan told the Irish Times that even if the system was found to be safe, few ministers would give it the go-ahead because the public would have little trust in it.
Although the government is of the opinion that any flaws in the system can eventually be resolved, its e-voting initiative is currently on hold with storage of machines estimated to be costing taxpayers up to EUR2 million per annum.
Department of Environment officials are likely to be subjected to a serious grilling from committee members as to why security concerns were not addressed before EUR50 million was spent on establishing e-voting in Ireland.
Fine Gael have also sought to make political capital out of the disaster. In light of reports that the government may have to write-off all of the EUR50 million investment in electronic voting, the party said that some frank explanations were now needed.
"The criticisms contained in the report of the Independent Commission on Electronic Voting make it clear that this was a fiasco of the highest order," said Fergus O'Dowd TD., Fine Gail's spokesman on the Environment. "Considering all the information that is available to him, Minister Roche needs to fully explain the findings of these inquiries."
"Is it now the case, as feared, that the government will have to write-off the EUR50 million spend on electronic voting because of the botched handling of the project? I will be raising the issue through Fine Gael's priority questions in the Dail early next week. The Minister must give some definite answers," added O'Dowd.
Autor: Charlie Taylor
Quelle: ElectricNews, 03.02.2005
