Government axes electronic voting
Last week Minister of the Interior, Bijleveld announced (Dutch) that for now the Netherlands will return to paper voting. A committee headed by former minister Korthals-Altes had concluded that currently electronic voting systems are unsafe. Earlier, the Wij Vertrouwen Stemcomputers Niet group (We do not trust voting kiosks), headed by well-known hacker Rop Gongrijp, had demonstrated how easy it is to hack a voting kiosk without leaving a trace.
The Korthals-Altes committee concluded that electronic voting should leave a paper trail, so that votes can be re-counted if necessary, and that it should be transparent. The soonest moment at which electronic voting can be re-introduced would be after the 2009 elections for the European parliament.
Two important points in the Korthals-Altes report –
The current electronic voting machines do not comply with basic voting requirement (transparency, controllability, integrity)The paper ballot still offers the best way to complyThe decision is temporary, but let’s hope it becomes permanent. Would the US Federal and Secretaries of State want such transparency and integrity in our voting system? Don’t count on it. My own Vermont SoS seems to believe in the efficiency and reliability of the current ballot optical scanning system; although her office claims to take all ‘reports’ seriously, she has not followed the recommendations of the Brennan Center report assessing the threats to the most commonly used types of voting technology. That report concluded that direct record electronic (DRE) machines, both with and without a contemporaneous paper record and paper-based optical scan voting systems were susceptible to fraud and manipulation, if appropriate procedures were not in place.
This was an amazing coup for “Wij vertrouwen stemcomputers niet.” Rarely have I seen a civic interest group be so effective. Surprising that the story hasn’t gotten more attention.
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