Ryano Stuff

Joe McCarthy has published a web site with a wealth of information on two issues close to my heart: electronic voting and incineration. Aptly named fiasco.ie, it contains documents compiled from Joe’s freedom of information requests on eVoting, and extracts from his submission to An Bord Pleanála on the proposed incinerator at Poolbeg.

It all makes for interesting reading. And if that whets your appetite, you can read the submission I drafted for John Gormley on the incinerator.

Irish Citizens for Trustworthy eVoting (ICTE) have finally had a meeting with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government and officials from his department. Representing ICTE at the meeting yesterday were Colm MacCárthaigh, Margaret McGaley and Adrian Colley. You can find a preliminary report on the meeting on the archives of the e-voting mailing list.

At first glance, it doesn’t appear as if much progress was made, although getting a meeting in itself was something of a breakthrough:

The Minister expressed surprise that this was our first meeting with the Department. He said that this was a “very open Department” and added that you couldn’t find a group of people who cared more - or knew more -
about voting systems than the Franchise section. I pointed out that we had been trying to communicate with the Department on this matter since 2001, but without success, and that as a result we had been involved in a dialogue of the deaf for much of the intervening time.

As we only have this preliminary and informal report so far, I won’t comment further at this stage.

The first report of the Commission on Electronic Voting has been released and makes for interesting reading. Also available is the text of every submission made to the Commission. These range from observations of just a few paragraphs to extremely detailed reports. Of particular interest (in my view) are the reports of Irish Citizens for Trustworthy e-Voting, Joe McCarthy, the Green Party and of course Powervote, the vendors of the system.

Some American e-Voting experts have launched a group blog at evoting-experts.com. So far it is understandably focused on specific e-Voting issues in the USA: (1, 2)

One little-reported aspect of Sunday’s referendum in Venezuela is the fact that where electronic voting was used, a voter-verifiable audit trail (VVAT) was provided in the form of printed ballots. A diagram explaining the voting process is available on the web site of the company who provided the electronic voting system.