Addition of a paper trail to e-voting system ‘unacceptable’

THE addition of a paper trail to the Government’s €50m e-voting system would be unacceptable, the company responsible for supplying the controversial machines has said.

The plan to introduce e-voting for last June’s local and European elections was scrapped after the Commission on Electronic Voting found fault with the security aspects of the system and criticised the lack of adequate testing on software.

In an initial report, published in May, the commission was “unable to satisfy itself sufficiently as to the accuracy and secrecy of the chosen system.”

In addition, experts retained by the commission “found it very easy to bypass electronic security measures ... overwrite the software, and thereby in theory to gain complete control over the count in a given constituency.”

The complete version of the commission’s report, published yesterday, stands by those findings and notes that the lack of a voter verifiable audit trail (VVAT) was one of the main criticisms of the Nedap/Powervote system. However, in its submission to the commission’s report, Nedap said a paper trail would result in more mistakes and was therefore unacceptable.

The commission, headed up by High Court judge Matthew Smith, is proceeding with further tests before it gives the system the all-clear for use.

A spokesman for Environment Minister Dick Roche said testing was ongoing on numerous aspects of the system, but ruled out the possibility of adding a paper trail. “We are testing it as is formatted at the moment,” he said.