Ballot verification will restore faith in system

IT is indeed a pity that e-voting has become a political football, as has been alleged by its proponents.

The blame for that, however, rests with the proposers of the present system. Most people accepted the bona fides of the proposed system originally.

But the attitude of the then Environment Minister, Martin Cullen, in his point-blank refusal to countenance any voter-verified audit trail (VVAT) set off the alarm bells. It was all downhill from there.

The terms of reference of the commission — which included an examination of the secrecy and accuracy, but not the verifiability, of the proposed system — inevitably raised further suspicions.

The commission’s own report says it all: “Under the chosen system, with no VVAT, there is no independent way of resolving any doubt in an electronic voting result... this creates the potential for the legitimacy of the system to be undermined”.

All Dick Roche’s proposed sub-committee on the subject has to do is introduce a voter-verified audit trail, together with an improvement of the software, as recommended by the commission, and the system is acceptable.

Why the proposers of the present e-voting system have not done that already, and removed the issue from the status of a political football, is hard to understand.

Anthony Leavy

1 Shielmartin Drive

Sutton

Dublin 13