no E-voting for you!

Agent Smith

i'm looking forward wo putting my x on the ballot in june,....

electronice voting doesnt give you the same feeling, if you knows what i mean?

Cork

Originally posted by dahamsta
Of course he would. The best way to get a corrupt party into power is to use corruption.

What evidence is there do you have to support such a conspiracy?

Does corruption not effect some political partys?

The commission went on the side of caution.

The Government accepted its findings.

The system may be very well be in place for the Presidental election.

Victor

http://home.eircom.net/content/unison/national/3118418?view=Eircomnet

Last night an overwhelming 68 per cent of respondents to a Sunday Independent phone poll declared that Environment Minister Martin Cullen should resign over the e-voting debacle

Cork

A phone poll is not really of a representation. The sample is not fairly drawn.

Why should Mr. Cullan resign?

The commission went on the side of caution.

The Government accepted its findings.

So, Mr. Cullan should resign?

The system could very well be OK for the Presidental election.

Victor

Originally posted by Cork
A phone poll is not really of a representation. The sample is not fairly drawn.

Are you slandering the paper and their pollsters? How do you know it wasn't fairly drawn?

Originally posted by Cork
Why should Mr. Cullan resign?

Slander. Lies. Being computer illitierate. Waste of public money. Conflict of interest. Lack of management. Lack of thoroughness. Eh, would that all add up to incompetence?

Originally posted by Cork
The system could very well be OK for the Presidental election.

Is that the proposed system with the error in it or some further "new" system?

Originally posted by Cork
Manually seperating the votes of 3 ballots?

Don't you mean 4 ballots? Wahooo! I was able to manage the separation of differently coloured pieces of paper certainly by age 4, probably even before that.

gandalf

Originally posted by Cork
Why should Mr. Cullan resign?

"The system has undergone extensive independent testing." -Martin Cullen on February 25.

He lied Cork thats why he should go. Obviously you or this government have no understanding of responsibility and accountability.

Gandalf.

Cork

Originally posted by gandalf
He lied Cork thats why he should go. Obviously you or this government have no understanding of responsibility and accountability.

Gandalf.

But it was the government who established the commission.

The government have taken the findings into account by not proceeding with eletronic voting on this ocasion.

We will get the opposition preaching and trying to make political capital - but the commission simply had not enough time to evaluate the system.

"Waste of public money"? The system could yet get the green light before the presidental election. Eletronic voting is the way to go.

With time - Public concerns will be addressed.

secret_squirrel

Tell me cork why did you bother to quote Gandalf and then fail to address his main point that Cullen Lied?

Yes public concerns should be adressed but the government you're so blindly supporting wanted to foist a flawed system on to voters - as system that was easy to corrupt.

Setting up a commision doesnt earn them any brownie points - they let things go far to later before doing so. It obviously didnt need much in the way of expertise to tell them how flawed the system was and yet they tried to force it through before backing down at the last minute.

And yes Im sure Electronic voting is part of the future, but not the system Cullen and his fools picked out. They should be fired for incompetance if nothing else.

Yes public concerns will be addressed - but not if the people you're so happy to defend get their way.

And it would be nice to see some reasoned arguement..not just reiterating you're earlier cranks comment in different ways....

Victor

Originally posted by Cork
"Waste of public money"? The system could yet get the green light before the presidental election. Eletronic voting is the way to go.

But the extra machines are being bought at a multiple of the contracts price and seeing as them whill depreciate between when they were bought and when the will be used, yes that is a waste of money.

I wonder if the fact that they were not adequately tested is a breach of contract (the contract specified independent testing).

Originally posted by Cork
Did not all political partys not support the system before the last election? Leaving U turns aside - electronic voting is on the way.

Were those parties not entitle to expect competency from the department's "experts"?

I also also refer you to John Bruton's letter to Bertie. http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1412947#post1412947

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?postid=1412427#post1412427

gandalf

Cork are you missing the plot totally here. No matter what the commission reported the Government in the form of Cullen and McCreedy said the system as it stood was ready to be rolled out and was fully tested. From the commissions report these statements were totally untrue and unfounded. The Government lied.

They have wasted money on a system that is flawed. They have wasted money with a company that will not share their source code and are obviously incapable of doing the job that they were contracted to do (of course this depends on the Governments original contract/tender for the job). Electronic voting will come in but how can we be sure this discredited system will be the one thats brought in when it does come around. Whatever way you look at it money has been wasted here.

Public concerns are why did the government lie to them and say the system was fully tested when that obviously wasn't the case.

Gandalf.

Cork

Originally posted by secret_squirrel


And yes Im sure Electronic voting is part of the future, but not the system Cullen and his fools picked out. They should be fired for incompetance if nothing else.

There is no evidence that the purposed system will not be implemented. The commission had not enough time to determine this or the contrary.

But the extra machines are being bought at a multiple of the contracts price and seeing as them whill depreciate between when they were bought and when the will be used, yes that is a waste of money.

But the system may very well be in place for the presidental election.

Whatever way you look at it money has been wasted here.

But - this system still could very well be in place before the presidental election. Money that was used for both training and PR could yet be considered not a waste of money.

Public concerns are why did the government lie to them and say the system was fully tested when that obviously wasn't the case.

The system was tested. The commission had not enough time to reach conclusions.

They have wasted money on a system that is flawed.

Commission did not reach that conclusion.

But Gandalf - public concerns should have been addressed earlier and the Commission set up earlier. I still have confidence is the system & I believe that it will be ready for the Presidental election.

But I agree it all needed to be handled much better.

sceptre

Originally posted by Cork
Commission did not reach that conclusion.

Actually yes it did. The Commission said that the current system couldn't guarantee secrecy OR accuracy. In other words, the current system can't guarantee that the votes are counted correctly AND the current system can't guarantee that your voting preference isn't on the desk of the local TD when you go in to complain about planning corruption.

Plus the government lied. And the adverts saying that the system is foolproof were still on the radio this evening. I'm practising by turning a light switch on and off but it may be a while before my practice becomes worth anything.

Villain

Cork, the Government LIED, its being said to you on a number of occasions already, but for some reason you haven't responded to it.

If it wasn't for the opposition and campaign groups the commission would probably never have been set-up. FF think they can do whatever they like and that the citizens of Ireland will sit back and say OK, I'm just glad the commission at least saw some sense.

star gazer

originally posted by Cork[/i}
public concerns should have been addressed earlier and the Commission set up earlier. I still have confidence is the system & I believe that it will be ready for the Presidental election.

And this has to be the responsibility of the Minister and his cabinet colleagues. They were given a lot of concerns before Christmas and yet decided that because it was not a big news story that they could press ahead with it. Only when extreme pressure came on in the Dáil did the government move to appoint the commission with narrow terms of reference. Clearly they messed up and the system wasn't tested as it should have been, Who will take responsibility for that???

this system still could very well be in place before the presidental election. Money that was used for both training and PR could yet be considered not a waste of money.

So now the government can gamble fifty million on a system that could be used and we should just accept that?

bonkey

Originally posted by many, many people
The Government lied

People keep saying this. Especially about Minister Cullen.

Its possible that he didn't lie - that he is just spectacularly inept and incompetent and didn't realise that what he was saying was not true.

Of course, that would also be a reason to get rid of him, IMHO.

Originally (not that its original) posted by Cork
The system was tested.

Yes, but you dropped out the word fully though. Look back at the comment you were responding to? Here it is again, and I'll highlight the important word you seem to have missed...just so it doesn't happen again :


The system was not fully tested. It was partially tested. It was not sufficiently tested. There is a rather significant difference, although it appears that you - like Mr. Cullen - are either incapable of or unwilling to admit that.

I still have confidence is the system

Good for you.

What I can't understand is that you defend the government because it set up this comission knowing it (the government) needed an expert opinion.

The comission provided this, and you attempt to defend the government's actions because it is following the findings.

At the same time, you attempt to defend Mr. Cullen by saying that you believe the expert findings and recommendations are wrong.

Tell me Cork...are you a qualified expert on IT and IT security? If not, how can you defend the non-expert government for seeking and following the experts' advice, whilst still trying to argue that the experts' advice is wrong in your opinion.

You're arguing, therefore, that the governemnt is wise in knowing what it doesn't know, honest in turning to experts, and shows integrity by accepting the same findings that you say we shouldn't accept!!!!!

With time - Public concerns will be addressed.

Yes indeed. Hopefully they will be. The point is that the system should go into place after valid concerns have been addressed, not before.

The system could very well be OK for the Presidental election.

Me guessing the final numbers could also be OK for teh Presidential election. It could produce the correct answer.

We can even have the same amount of surity in the figures I produce, because like e-voting, my system can't be verified against how people actually voted.

Will you back my guesstimate as an acceptably good system for the election, Cork?

I'll even be able to provide you with some limited information beforehand - which may or may not be accurate itself - on the approximate process that I will use.

And hey - an independant comission will recommend that you not use my system either....so it will be just like the real thing.

Go on. Back "Bonkey's Voting E-Guesstimator 2003". You know its the right solution.

jc

Typedef

Personally as a voter and a professional programmer, I can never have confidence in a closed source system, which has no paper trail.

I'm shocked the Minister hasn't done the decent thing and resign, rather then further discredit the government.

It's bad enough the government lied and said the system was secure and voter verifable, and it's bad enough that the government completely ignored advice from a lexicon of knowledgeable IT professionals and cherry picked, the 'experts' it would listen to, but, for this man to continue in office and attempt yet again to shoe horn this bogus, non-voter verifable system is a complete farce.

As a programmer and a voter, I will never trust a system who's source code "I" as a voter can't verify, that goes completely against my ability to verify every step of the voting process and no, the notion of simply 'trusting' the vendor is inadequate in a modern democracy.

In fact it would be a reterograde step from the Joe Soap verifable paper based system we have today.

The Clown Man

Originally posted by irish1
Cork, the Government LIED, its being said to you on a number of occasions already, but for some reason you haven't responded to it.

If it wasn't for the opposition and campaign groups the commission would probably never have been set-up. FF think they can do whatever they like and that the citizens of Ireland will sit back and say OK, I'm just glad the commission at least saw some sense.

Folks.

The commission did not find that the system did not work. For all they knew it could be absolutely flawless. They recommended that it not be used because basically, they didn't know. There were small code changes in the last few months that would have been seen as totally insignificant to anyone who could read and understand the code. They were mainly procedural changes and changes to the userablility of the program. Never once did the commission suggest that the system was incapable of doing it's job; they simply said that in the time they were given to test this system, they could not provide a satisfactory conclusion. And the default result had to be a "No" - how can they say yes until they are 100% sure; it's thier asses on the line if they did.

From the very start the government was told that this worked. I am fairly sure that not one of them could perform a system test themselves, but they made the mistake of relying on the words of basically everyone that had every been in contact with and using the system in the last 10 years.

Now, €40m later we are going to go back to the old system of recounts, unsurity and inaccuracy. The ballot box system has far more flaws than the electronic system. What the hell difference does a paper trail make if you can't even track it properly? Imagine we were only adopting the ballot box system now. Would you honestly think we would accept a system that works as it does? If a commission were given 1 week to test the ballot box system they would come back the same night wetting their pants laughing.

A far superior system has been sacraficed for the initially flawed one because of exactly what Cork has been talking about. Moaners. Sure there are genuine doubters with good reason because there are good reasons to doubt but the VAST majority are people with a gripe because their daddies voted FG or Labour or whatever and who don't really care what they are arguing about as long as it's the total opposite of what the others are saying. Viva la politics.

Don't forget to keep an eye on the big picture. Do the genuine code doubters understand how the ballot box system works? Have you ever analysed it? Give that a go and see what you come up with.

Do the political moaners realise what a democratically sound system they have passed up? Do they really even care?

The big picture i see is:

We were less than one month away from using this new improved system which we were all (by the way) ready to accept and now we are going back to the system which uses wax and stamp as the official safegard against any illegal interference. Congratulations opposition. Way to go.

Villain

Originally posted by The Clown Man
The big picture i see is:

We were less than one month away from using this new improved system which we were all (by the way) ready to accept and now we are going back to the system which uses wax and stamp as the official safegard against any illegal interference. Congratulations opposition. Way to go.

So you'd rather go with a closed source system, that has not been tested enough to show it's not open to error or interference over the system that elected the current government, the system that has been used and accpeted for decades???

That doesn't make much sense to me.

The Clown Man

Oh, it has been tested alright and has been used for one decade. Just not by us. The Belgians, Germans and Dutch for example, who have used it nationally but not for the same purposes have tried and tested it and found it sound.

The fact that no Irish person has tested it and found it to be flawless does not mean it has not been tested. It is true that it has never been used for national elections and there needs to be testing done by ourselves to ensure it works, it is just that thanks to the amount of mainly unfounded pressure, the default answer was always going to be a "no" from the commission. And they were never going to be in a position to say yes, regardless of what system they were testing.

Villain

Originally posted by The Clown Man
Oh, it has been tested alright and has been used for one decade. Just not by us. The Belgians, Germans and Dutch for example, who have used it nationally but not for the same purposes have tried and tested it and found it sound.

The fact that no Irish person has tested it and found it to be flawless does not mean it has not been tested. It is true that it has never been used for national elections and there needs to be testing done by ourselves to ensure it works, it is just that thanks to the amount of mainly unfounded pressure, the default answer was always going to be a "no" from the commission. And they were never going to be in a position to say yes, regardless of what system they were testing.

This system??, you mean the exact same software and exact same machines that we were going to use here have been used in Belgium German and Holland for a decade, really??? I wasn't aware of that.

The Clown Man

Look, if I was going to specify everything for each post I would be here explaining for a very long time. The system that was to be used here was customised for our specific use (and would have to be customised for each election - there will be slight changes made for the presedential election in November) The main code, however, is the the same. The setup is the same. The procedures have changed very slightly. The operating systems on the upload PC's has changed.

When I say "System" I'm talking about the base system. By the nature of IT systems there are going to be changes every time. Do you know any computer system that is not constantly being changed and improved?

Now please, no more silly specifics.

Villain

Originally posted by The Clown Man
Oh, it has been tested alright and has been used for one decade. Just not by us. The Belgians, Germans and Dutch for example, who have used it nationally but not for the same purposes have tried and tested it and found it sound

And then

Originally posted by The Clown Man

1.The procedures have changed
2.The system that was to be used here was customised
3.The operating systems on the upload PC's has changed.

Now please, no more silly specifics.

Sorry if these differences seem silly to you, but I think when it comes to elections nothing is silly in regards to our votes are counted, sorry for being smart assed about it, but I think your arguments are incorrect.

The Clown Man

OK, granted. Well put it this way:

Day in day out you accept computer systems to continue to perform the tasks that they are programmed to perform. Take banking systems. Everyone wants their banking to work perfectly. Banking mistakes are unacceptable. Banks use computers for just about every aspect of banking. They are forever implementing new computerised schemes. They change, you are aware they change. They sometimes are faulty, you are aware they are sometimes faulty, yet you accept that in the end, you will not get done over bacause there are people behind the computers who can see if something goes wrong.

What makes this system so different? Well for one it has had far more testing than most new banking systems. It is not trying to achieve a monetary gain or any gain for that matter other than to be as fair as is possible. It is completely unbiased in that it is not government departments that are operating it but the civil service, who are neutral (or at least a fair reflection on the average views of the public.)

This system is far more apt to deal with what it is meant to do than most new banking systems and much more trustable, yet a bank implements a new system to deal with your money and the general attitude amongst its customers is - "Oh, I see - can you pass the sugar?"

People are not out to warp the voting system. Everyone who works on it just wants it to be fair. Even if there were a minute flaw, the neutral people behind it would sort it out. There is no cloak and dagger politics going on.

Actually, it was just normal politics that has sown doubt and fear into peoples minds over something that deserves neither. Because that's what opposition parties do. They stir shít. And money is wasted and in this circumstance a perfectly good system which could and should have replaced the archaic system currently in use.

secret_squirrel

Originally posted by The Clown Man
When I say "System" I'm talking about the base system. By the nature of IT systems there are going to be changes every time. Do you know any computer system that is not constantly being changed and improved?

Now please, no more silly specifics.

Do you work in IT? I work with and manage plenty of systems that havent been changed for years. In fact many or most systems approach a point of stability, where the number of mods drops near or close to zero.

Now please no more sweeping generalisations.

You are really showing you ignorance if you think that the 'magic of IT' will make everything better and we can all sleep soundly in our beds knowing that the system is infallable.

If we're really lucky maybe the fairies will fix our shoes overnight too.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

star gazer

originally posted by the Clown Man
The commission did not find that the system did not work. For all they knew it could be absolutely flawless. They recommended that it not be used because basically, they didn't know. There were small code changes in the last few months that would have been seen as totally insignificant to anyone who could read and understand the code. They were mainly procedural changes and changes to the userablility of the program. Never once did the commission suggest that the system was incapable of doing it's job; they simply said that in the time they were given to test this system, they could not provide a satisfactory conclusion. And the default result had to be a "No" - how can they say yes until they are 100% sure; it's thier asses on the line if they did.
A far superior system has been sacraficed for the initially flawed one because of exactly what Cork has been talking about. Moaners. Sure there are genuine doubters with good reason because there are good reasons to doubt but the VAST majority are people with a gripe because their daddies voted FG or Labour or whatever and who don't really care what they are arguing about as long as it's the total opposite of what the others are saying. Viva la politics.

Unfortunately that argument is full of holes.
First hole is that the terms of reference for the commission were quite narrow in that only secrecy and accuracy were to be judged, not the electronic voting system and it's suitablity for use in our electoral system. So we really have no comparison between the old system and the proposed Electronic voting system by an independent body.
second hole, the system used before was not certified or accredited by any independent body for use, in fact the system brought before the commission couldn't possibly be certified either because the finalised version of the system still wasn't available.
thrid hole. as was said above a bug was found in the software for distribution of transfers and had the Political pressure not come from the opposition and concerned experts, there would have been no commission to find that bug and the election could well have been incorrect. Berating political parties for doing their job is arrogant because no government is perfect and should be scrutinised even when they don't want it.
fourth hole. Paper ballot system is trusted, electronic voting had not yet earned the trust of the people and theMinister did it no favours by being reluctant in giving full information about the system and the testing done on the system.
fifth hole. The Commission on Electronic voting found that there were some parts of the system that hadn't even been tested.
sixth hole. If the system was as flawless as some people told us it was, why were there not the test reports provided which such an assumption must have been based upon? the only conclusion there is that there was no conclusive proof that these voting machines were technically up to the level that they were politically promoted as.
enough holes or do you want more?

The Clown Man

I do work in IT.

I don't trust the IT behind it as much as I trust the goodwill of the people behind it. Good people are not as rare as fairies, actually just about everyone has a good idea of morals and only wants to see the right thing done. Actually, I find your suspicions of untrustable administrators, crooked program testers, conspiracy theories and things that go bump in the night equally laughable.

And the E-Voting Commision did not say the opposite. They said that they couldn't be sure as they did not have the time left to test fully the exact code that was going to be used on the day of the election.

The bugs they found were bugs relating to the display of a followup screen to a count. I do not know the exact specifics of the bug but I do know that the system developers in Nedap in the Netherlands were aware of the bug and it had no effect on the actual counting of the votes or the testing itself but was due to be fixed in the final patch anyway.

Remember, the system had to be changed slightly to be suitable for the Germans, had to be changed slightly to suit the Belgians and had to be changed slightly to suit us. Small bugs were, in all fairness, to be expected. However, the code that deals with the counting of the votes, as far as I'm aware, was the same for all.

star gazer

originally posted by the Clown Man
I don't trust the IT behind it as much as I trust the goodwill of the people behind it. Good people are not as rare as fairies, actually just about everyone has a good idea of morals and only wants to see the right thing done. Actually, I find your suspicions of untrustable administrators, crooked program testers, conspiracy theories and things that go bump in the night equally laughable.

amazing. Do you think we should ignore the commissions findings and go ahead with the electronic voting system's introduction in June? Luaghing at people who want to take precautions around changing a fundamental part of our electoral process is a bit rich. Proper testing of the system is not only vital to the system it is also vital for public confidence and when you are talking about a system that cannot have a link between the input and the inputer (ie voter anonymity) the level of testing has to be of the highest order and fully independent. That is why even though the commission was not allowed to look at it within it's terms of reference it did mention a voter verifiable audit trail in its report. This would allow for ongoing feedback as to the accuracy of the electronic vote and would make testing end to end more effective in finding prolems.

Remember, the system had to be changed slightly to be suitable for the Germans, had to be changed slightly to suit the Belgians and had to be changed slightly to suit us. Small bugs were, in all fairness, to be expected. However, the code that deals with the counting of the votes, as far as I'm aware, was the same for all.

that depends on your definition of slightly; was the system here changed slightly by a few hundred lines of code or tens of thousands of lines of code?

oscarBravo

I'm getting rather fed up seeing this type of meaningless comparison:

Originally posted by The Clown Man
Day in day out you accept computer systems to continue to perform the tasks that they are programmed to perform. Take banking systems. Everyone wants their banking to work perfectly. Banking mistakes are unacceptable. Banks use computers for just about every aspect of banking. They are forever implementing new computerised schemes. They change, you are aware they change. They sometimes are faulty, you are aware they are sometimes faulty, yet you accept that in the end, you will not get done over bacause there are people behind the computers who can see if something goes wrong.

What makes this system so different?

I know you put that as a rhetorical question, but let me point out to you the single most important distinction: secrecy. A core aspect of any system that aims to implement our electoral system is the fact that it must be impossible to establish afterwards how any given individual voted.

Next time you try to find a parallel system to compare to electronic voting, make sure you find one in which all identifying information must be stripped away.

Back to your points:

Well for one it has had far more testing than most new banking systems.

You are taking the piss, right? Do you have the faintest idea how much testing goes into a banking system?

It is not trying to achieve a monetary gain or any gain for that matter other than to be as fair as is possible.

In theory, yes. It's also entirely possible - in theory - that certain people could have something to gain from it not being fair. There's potentially greater incentive to corrupt an electoral system than a banking system.

It is completely unbiased in that it is not government departments that are operating it but the civil service, who are neutral (or at least a fair reflection on the average views of the public.)

...but it's a foreign-owned private company that's writing the software.

This system is far more apt to deal with what it is meant to do than most new banking systems

How do you know?

and much more trustable,

How do you know?

yet a bank implements a new system to deal with your money and the general attitude amongst its customers is - "Oh, I see - can you pass the sugar?"

If money starts evaporating out of my account, whether because of deliberate fraud or an undetected bug, I'll find out about it on my next bank statement. When will we find out about an incorrect result from this system?

People are not out to warp the voting system.

How do you know?

Everyone who works on it just wants it to be fair.

How do you know?

Even if there were a minute flaw, the neutral people behind it would sort it out.

How would they detect the flaw? If the machine announced that one candidate had received 100% of the poll, how would they sort it out?

There is no cloak and dagger politics going on.

How do you know?

Actually, it was just normal politics that has sown doubt and fear into peoples minds over something that deserves neither. Because that's what opposition parties do. They stir shít. And money is wasted and in this circumstance a perfectly good system which could and should have replaced the archaic system currently in use.

Much of the objection was created by non-political, technical-minded individuals, who were deeply dissatisfied with the obvious flaws in the system. The political fuss since was a smokescreen the minister tried - unsuccessfully - to hide behind.

oscarBravo

Originally posted by The Clown Man
I don't trust the IT behind it as much as I trust the goodwill of the people behind it.

Don't you think it would be a good thing to be able to trust both?

Actually, I find your suspicions of untrustable administrators, crooked program testers, conspiracy theories and things that go bump in the night equally laughable.

...but you're perfectly happy to accept bugs in the system. The wrong election result is only a problem if it was arrived at corruptly, is that it?

And the E-Voting Commision did not say the opposite. They said that they couldn't be sure as they did not have the time left to test fully the exact code that was going to be used on the day of the election.

They said the standard of proof required to accept it was higher than that required to reject it. This doesn't seem to be a philosophy you subscribe to.

The bugs they found were bugs relating to the display of a followup screen to a count. I do not know the exact specifics of the bug but I do know that the system developers in Nedap in the Netherlands were aware of the bug and it had no effect on the actual counting of the votes or the testing itself but was due to be fixed in the final patch anyway.

I'm curious where you got this information from: the CEV report didn't specify the nature of the bug.

Remember, the system had to be changed slightly to be suitable for the Germans, had to be changed slightly to suit the Belgians and had to be changed slightly to suit us. Small bugs were, in all fairness, to be expected. However, the code that deals with the counting of the votes, as far as I'm aware, was the same for all.

When, exactly, did Belgium and Germany adopt our system of PR-STV?