The Commission on Electronic Voting wants submissions about the proposed electronic voting system. It’s a pity the government has left it so late to evaluate its EUR 60m investment in technology.
Still, it is difficult to see how anyone can make a meaningful submission to the commission, because the government has made next-to-no information about the system available to the general public.
I have emailed the chairman of the commission (submissions@cev.ie) to ask him to send me the information I need to make a proper submission:
– technical documentation for the system
– source code for all parts of the system
– test plans and results of tests
– operational manuals and training materials
– contracts and contractual arrangements regarding the system
If you are interested, you might want to do the same.
The ICTE people and other concerned citizens have spent several thousand euros on FOI requests to get (some) of this data. Still quite a lot missing though…
But I want it in a nice bundle, so that I can read it all and evaluate it. Surely that’s fair enough if they’re inviting me to make a submission about it?
There are some interesting weaknesses at the technical support side of e-voting which neeed to be examined in the public spotlight before replacing the tallymen.
I very much doubt that the invitation for submissions is anything more than a PR exercise, from which no action will result.
Governments are good at lecturing business about the merits of being businesslike and competitive (except of course those few businesses – agriculture, aviation, steel, movies etc – they favour with unwarranted subsidies and loopholes).??
Yet those same governments are last in line when it comes to applying business principles to their own affairs if this involves a measure of pain, risk or inconvenience. “PRI” is something that every politician PRIfers to avoid at all costs.??
Electronic Voting with Eyes Closed is but one example, discussed in this post in my own latest blog –
http://www.tallrite.com/blog.htm#ProBusinessGovernmentsFearPainRiskandInconvenience
Well, I sent in the email. They eventually wrote back to me saying that the documents they required weren’t under their control, and that they couldn’t send them to me. Shame, but not very surprising.