[ILUG] [OT] Electronic election count

[Thomas Bridge]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

At 11:09 29/05/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>Thomas Bridge <tbridge at vianetworks.ie> wrote:
>
> > Not to mention the fact that apparently up to 300 votes from the Bray
> > area were apparently invalidated due to the polling officer failing
> > to correctly mark the paper.  I'm not sure what happened in the end -
> > but if they hadn't counted and Mildred Fox had lost by a handful of
> > votes she'd probably have good reason to feel agreived.
> >
> > Thats one thing electronic voting will definitely fix.
>
>It strikes me that a simple A4 poster pinned to the wall of the voting
>cubicle describing the marks that a valid ballot should have, so that
>the voter could check it themselves before placing the ballot in the
>ballot box would be a far more cost effective solution to that problem.

Er, no.  It might have reduced the number of invalid votes, but human 
nature being what it is there would still have been some votes in the box 
not being properly stamped.    In  a situation like Wicklow, or the Cork 
constituency Catherine Sinnott was running in - that could still be enough 
to materially effect the result.

>Worse still, as one letter writer to the Irish Times pointed out last
>week, if the whole country had been using electronic voting for the
>first time last week, and Fine Gael had lost 23 seats, there would be a
>significant number of people who would have sincere doubts about the
>validity of the process. At least with the existing system, nobody has

I dunno - I think people were surprised when Nora Owen didn't win her seat 
back on the Friday night, but noone was seriously questioning the validity 
of the result.   That letter strikes me as underestimating the intelligence 
of the Irish electorate.

>suggested that there was anything underhand involved, but with a process
>as opaque as the electronic system used last week, you can be sure that
>the conspiracy theories would have abounded.

I've seen at least one person suggest that in Wicklow it would have been 
easy to "lose" a bundle of votes in the process.   Any electoral system 
gives rise to conspiracy theories.

T.


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 7.0.3 for non-commercial use <http://www.pgp.com>

iQA/AwUBPPTI3b6WYZbx1eG3EQJR+QCfW3H0y0PBZ9gJC7S9VQ7luFaH7WwAoJHc
RoUVnNh79QqjGWeqKEOykU25
=FKhY
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----