Day of truth for e-voting

THE Government will today be faced with the decision whether to abandon or persist with electronic voting after it receives a new report on the system.

The report from the Commission on Electronic Voting, an independent body established by the Government in 2004 to examine the much-criticised system, could spell the death-knell for e-voting if negative. The commission presented an interim report in April 2004 saying it could not express the requisite confidence in the system for it to be used in that year’s local and European elections.

As a result, the 7,504 electronic voting machines, purchased at a cost of €52 million, were mothballed. The storage of the machines is now costing the taxpayer a further €700,000 a year.

The commission’s first full report was published in December 2004.

Since then, it has carried out further examination of the e-voting system, and those analyses will form the basis of the commission’s second report, which will be published today by the Government.