Well, can't we? Being that it's voting season here again I thought I'd contact local candidates (Colm O'Gorman, Brendan Howlin, Liam Twomey, Lisa McDonald) &/or their parties (Labour, Greens, Fianna Fail, Fine Gael...) to find out. Here's what I sent them;
Update - As a result of some feedback I managed to find a 2006 Estonia Report (Click to download!) which details their online voting system & contains various stats & conclusions;
HelloI'll be sure to post up whatever responses I receive, if any. While there are no doubt issues that would need be to be resolved, bear in mind that an online voting system would make spoiled votes an impossibility due to the validation checks that could be used. Surely the 100000+ spoiled votes in Scotland this week are a good indication that a system with paper ballots have no future?
I would be happy to support whichever party / local candidate intends to get on this issue and make it work, as it's something I've not heard any party / local candidate yet mention.
Why has online voting yet to be introduced, or even trialed, in Ireland? Surely with the multitude of services available online it's about time to at least be trialling online voting. If not, then why not? Consider that...
You can bank online, e.g. 365 Online
You can pay & claim taxes online - Revenue Online Services
You can book flights online, e.g. Ryanair
You can invest online, e.g. Rabodirect
You can buy/sell every good imaginable online, e.g. Amazon.co.uk
You can make CAO applications online.
Ironically, you can even check if you're on the electoral register online.
Estonia is now the worlds first country to offer online voting for all citizens (Soon to be followed by Hawaii);
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/evote/0,72846-0.html?tw=wn_index_1
"You trust your money with the internet, and you won't trust your vote? I don't think so," said Tarvi Martens, project manager for the country's e-voting project.
With small-scale trials of online voting in other countries such as the UK, France, Holland, USA surely it's about time Ireland followed suit?
Online voting surely must be the ultimate logical extension of Reachservices.ie; "REACH is an agency set up by Government to improve the quality of service to customers of the Irish Public Service. Reach built the Public Services Broker to provide an integrated framework and shared services platform to facilitate high volume, secure transactions with citizens, businesses and public sector agencies in Ireland." With identity verification provided via ReachServices all that should be necessary is to craft a single voting website in the same vein as Revenue Online Services.
Perhaps even more importantly, online voting would likely convince more people to vote.
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/29/181257
"A recent UK research survey by NTL:Telewest Business found that nearly half of the younger respondents would be more likely to vote online. This year the UK government has authorized 13 local election pilots including Internet voting..."
Arguments to the contrary would appear to be negated by the fact that we already carry out a multitude of financial transactions online every week. If we can be the worlds first country to introduce a smoking ban, we can at least be second to introduce online voting.
Update - As a result of some feedback I managed to find a 2006 Estonia Report (Click to download!) which details their online voting system & contains various stats & conclusions;
No failures were found in the technical system of e-voting. No cases of buying e-votes have become public and no legal proceedings were initiated. The legitimacy of election results has not been contested by referring to e-voting.
7 comments:
Considering the size of the country online voting should be a much simpler task compared to bigger countries. ITA that more young adults would vote if they could do so online. Actually, I think more people in general would be more likely to vote if they didn't have to go to a polling place before or after work.
No, we cannot vote online. It is not safe or secret, and to the extent that it can become safe, it will become less secret, and vice-versa. Have you not been paying attention to the fiasco of The Bertster's ridiculous e-voting fetish ?
I'm not concerned with the e-voting machines, that's a seperate issue.
As regards secrecy & safety for online voting.
Secrecy isn't overly difficult. Personally identifiable data can be hashed. Simple as that.
Safety. Well, for that I would suggest 2 things; first. 2 secure logins - As suggested Reachservices.ie should be the first as it provides ID validation. The other would have to be a PIN setup similar to ROS. The second would be to make such a site compatible with only Internet Explorer 7 & Firefox 2. Why? Because these browsers have integrated anti-Phishing features. This would greatly reduce the task of anyone being able to spoof a fake site to get your login details.
Regardless. If Estonia, Hawaii, UK, France can all do this why can't we? Paper voting & counting is dated.
You really have to consider the benefits that would be provided if the effort was put into getting such a system implemented & to scratch;
It's convenient for voters.
It's impossible to spoil your vote.
Near instantaneous results.
My optimism on the subject comes from the fact that I work with databases & much of what I say I already have functioning & in daily use. I'm by no an expert, but I fail to see why more is not being done to get such experts to show that it can be done & concerns can be overcome.
Actually, Estonia have a 2006 Report on e-voting available here;
http://www.vvk.ee/english/report2006.pdf
Gives a detailed breakdown of their system too...
"No failures were found in the technical system of e-voting. No cases of buying e-votes have
become public and no legal proceedings were initiated. The legitimacy of election results has
not been contested by referring to e-voting."
I've yet to read any reports on the UKs online trail either, beyond the fact 2 of the counting systems for the online votes crashed; manual counting being used instead (The votes themselves were not lost).
As far as I'm concerned; it can be done & it will be done. But much like broadband in this country, it's just a matter of how far we'll lag behind implementing it.
You state that the benefits of online voting would be;
It's convenient for voters.
It's impossible to spoil your vote.
Near instantaneous results.
Convenient for who? What percentage of the population have PC access? What percentage of that percentage would want to vote online instead of on paper? When the UK trialled a range of voting approaches (including online voting, SMS text voting, digital TV voting, supermarket kiosk voting), they found that there was no increase in turnout over the traditional approach. The 'convenience' arguement is spurious.
On the spoilt vote issue, do you realise that some people actually want to spoil their vote, so inability to spoil would be a backward step.
Yes - we might get the results quicker, but tell me exactly why that is a benefit?
Your original blog entry is flawed. The fundamental difference between a voting transaction and the submission of a tax return or an ATM withdrawal is the essential requirement for anonymity (to protect the secrecy of the ballot) combined with high security (to protect control of the nation). With a tax return or ATM withdrawal, it is essential that the transaction is linked directly to an individual. With a vote, it is essential that the transaction is NOT linked to an individual. I would be interested to hear your proposals for ensuring anonymous yet secure electronic transactions.
You also seem to have ignored the importance of the private voting booth in ensuring the integrity of the election process. By insisting that all votes take place in a private booth, you ensure that there is no possibility that a voter can be made to vote under duress (possibly by a family member). You also ensure that there is no possibility of vote buying or selling. Once you allow voting to take place outside of a private booth, you open up the doors to duress voting and vote buying. I would be interested to hear your proposals for preventing either of these serious abuses with remove voting.
You should really do a bit more serious research on this topic before you make your next pronouncement.
I'll address some of these points in a new post...
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