Improving e-voting system ‘the common sense thing to do’
On Tuesday, the Commission for Electronic Voting, an independent body established by the Government to examine the system, issued a report finding severe flaws in the software used to count votes.
The commission said that while it could recommend the e-voting machines themselves for use — albeit with some minor modifications — it couldn’t recommend the software.
The Government is now faced with the prospect of spending millions of euro more to replace the software or heeding the opposition’s call to abandon the system.
Yesterday, Mr Roche said that “the common sense thing to do” was to make improvements to the system rather than abandon it.
He said the commission’s report was largely positive, and that the cost of righting the software, at about €460,000, compared favourably to the cost of abandoning e-voting altogether.
However, experts have indicated that the cost could run to several million euro.
The €460,000 figure cited by Mr Roche was the cost of adapting the original software for the machines purchased by the Government. Developing new software from scratch to satisfy the commission’s requirements would be much more expensive, the experts said.
But Mr Roche stressed: “It’s the obvious and sensible thing to do. We are looking at what it will take to make the software right.”
He said an international peer review group would be established to monitor the overhaul of the software.
He repeated his assertion that e-voting was the only way to prevent spoiled votes. Eleven thousand votes were spoiled in the last general election and he referred in particular to the Limerick West constituency, where the last seat was decided by a single vote while 470 votes in the constituency were deemed spoiled.
Mr Roche said he accepted that efforts would have to be made to win public support for the project.
“Has confidence been shaken? Yes it has,” he said.
“[But] to correct it will cost a whole lot less than to scrap it.”
However, Justice Minister Michael McDowell, in keeping with his party’s policy, said many issues had yet to be resolved. The PDs passed a motion at its annual conference this year calling for e-voting to be scrapped.
“A lot of new issues are raised in the report if we are to make it so that the public do have confidence. Many of the issues that the PDs had will probably be addressed… (But) nobody wants a system that is in any way tainted in public confidence.”
However, an expert in the area has said it could take five years, and millions of euro more, to get e-voting up and running.
“Based on the fact that it took two years for the Government to test this system, which clearly doesn’t work, I would estimate that it would take five years or maybe more to develop and test a system that works properly,” said Margaret McGaley of Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-voting.
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