US e-vote glitches a lesson for Ireland

THE use of electronic voting in the US presidential election should be a salutary warning to the new Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, if he intends to bring it in without a verifiable paper trail.

Officials in Franklin County, Ohio, have acknowledged that President Bush received additional votes as a result of a touch-screen voting system malfunction.

A precinct in the county reported a 4,000 vote win for the president which appeared to exceed the number of registered voters.

In a North Carolina precinct, 4,000 votes were lost when balloting continued after a recording device ran out of memory.

Whatever about losing a few thousand votes in America, such glitches in a Dáil election would be catastrophic and would no doubt lead to the election being repeated.

Cllr Leo Varadkar

Roselawn Road

Dublin 15