I see that the Government is still pursuing its discredited e-voting "white elephant". I wish to give notice that I, for one, will vote against the Government in any future elections that use e-voting machines which do not incorporate a verifiable audit trail and an option for "none of the above".
Recently in eVoting Category
The forthcoming referendum should be rejected, irrespective of any possible merits, by the electorate for two principled reasons.
Firstly, as a protest against the use of an e-voting system that fails to contain paper-based voter verification, published source code and fully tested systems.
Secondly, to object to proposals for constitutional change being pushed past the Dail and electorate over a holiday period with minimal time for reflection and debate. Instead of Green Papers on both matters we have been offered whitewash and flannel.
Letter published in the Sunday Tribune and Sunday Business Post on 25th April 2004.
We have been assured that e-voting is simple, fast, accurate and inexpensive. On this basis, I request that the option "None of the above" be appended to all lists of candidates. Also, an election should be rerun in any constituency where the actual poll, excluding votes for "None of the above", is less than 50% of the total eligible to vote there.
On a related point, the only people who seem to be pushing e-Voting are Minister Cullen and TDs. Given that we have a perfectly good paper-based system at present, will the Minister undertake to resign without argument or delay if any significant disruption or failures arise during the operation of e-Voting in the forthcoming elections. After all, he wants the system and he is try to fix something that is not broken.
Broadcast on RTE's Today with Pat Kenny on 6th February 2004.
