European Parliament Elections 2019

Squatter

eagle eye wrote: »

It's not that difficult to write a few numbers on a ballot paper. In my polling station there were friendly lids which made it easy to post your completed ballots.
I don't like the idea of computerised voting, too easy to mess it up, for somebody to put malware in the system etc.

Do you use e-banking? ..............................

Zubeneschamali

Squatter wrote: »

Thanks.

But presumably the voting is still by STV?

No. For example, in Britain, they use a closed d'Hondt system.


You walk into the booth and put an X beside one party. There is a list of candidates beside each party, but you don't get to select candidates, just one X beside one party. That's it, no transferable anything.

eagle eye

Squatter wrote:

Do you use e-banking? ..............................

Yes, but that's completely different. It's run by a for profit professional organisation.
Walking into any public sector office that you can and see how archaic their systems are.

Squatter

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

No. For example, in Britain, they use a closed d'Hondt system.


You walk into the booth and put an X beside one party. There is a list of candidates beside each party, but you don't get to select candidates, just one X beside one party. That's it, no transferable anything.

But Britain isn't in the EU!

Give me an example from a grown up EU country, please.

Squatter

eagle eye wrote: »

Yes, but that's completely different. It's run by a for profit professional organisation.
Walking into any public sector office that you can and see how archaic their systems are.

Please don't talk rubbish.

The public service offers a range of top-notch online services.

Off the top of my head, they include things like renewing one's car tax or passport, obtaining one's PRSI contribution record, making an NCT appointment, not to mention Revenue's excellent suite of ROS services!

Christy42

eagle eye wrote: »

Yes, but that's completely different. It's run by a for profit professional organisation.
Walking into any public sector office that you can and see how archaic their systems are.

Work in a bank and you might find the same thing.

However your point stands.

Your bank account is safe by hiding in a crowd. Some bank accounts will end up not being secure (they have tests to check for dodgy transactions for a reason, how many of you have had to change cards when the bank calls about someone ordering donuts in Singapore or whatever).

The bank stops the transaction or refunds you the money. There are probably a good few not caught Life moves on and it is not a massive deal (even if it is annoying).

Can we have similar checks in an electronic vote? What would be an unusual transaction there. Even then you have a few primary targets (biggest vote centers or whatever central system is dragging all the results together).

As a system votes would be harder to secure and the result is far harder to reverse a month later.

Zubeneschamali

Squatter wrote: »

Give me an example from a grown up EU country, please.

OK, Germany:


Ballot papers vary across the 16 Bundesländer. Parties are allowed to register nationwide candidate lists or lists for different Bundesländer. Only the Christian Democratic parties (CDU/CSU) chose no to register nationwide lists. Hence, the ballot papers differ only with respect to the CDU/CSU regional lists. Every voter has one vote to give to a party. A maximum of ten names of each party's candidates are printed on the ballot sheet. The party decides on the ranking of the candidates.

Christy42

I also think it is a helpful educational resource to have the results come up like this. We (myself included) are generally under educated about a lot of political life and so it would get rid of a valuable educational tool.

josip

So for the Dublin European elections, the first 3 seats are already decided and it's going to be last one standing between Boylan and Clare Daly ?
Of the 2 which would be preferable?

Eric Cartman

josip wrote: »

So for the Dublin European elections, the first 3 seats are already decided and it's going to be last one standing between Boylan and Clare Daly ?
Of the 2 which would be preferable?

its like picking between sewer water to drink or rotton food to eat. There are no real winners there. Suppose the only the advantage of daly is that as an independent she's no real party backing.

eagle eye

Squatter wrote:

Please don't talk rubbish.
The public service offers a range of top-notch online services.
Off the top of my head, they include things like renewing one's car tax or passport, obtaining one's PRSI contribution record, making an NCT appointment, not to mention Revenue's excellent suite of ROS services!

Yes and have you tried to edit your address and put in your eir code in motor tax? It won't let you.
There are lots of problems and glitches in their systems.
I'm not talking rubbish, I actually know a lot about it.

Loafing Oaf

josip wrote: »

So for the Dublin European elections, the first 3 seats are already decided and it's going to be last one standing between Boylan and Clare Daly ?
Of the 2 which would be preferable?

My understanding is that Boylan is pretty much out of it and the 'battle' is between Andrews and Daly for third place. Although with Brexit looking increasingly like a reality, fourth will likely be as good as third.

Donald Trump

Squatter wrote: »

Do you use e-banking? ..............................

Your analogy would only work if a voter could trace their vote. And that would only really be if voting were not anonymous so that the votes could be published afterwards




You see, if someone hacks my bank account and changes balance of 1000 to 100 (by transferring 900), I will know afterwards. If someone hacks my e-voting machine and changes or deletes my vote, how will I ever know?

Eric Cartman

Donald Trump wrote: »

Your analogy would only work if a voter could trace their vote. And that would only really be if voting were not anonymous so that the votes could be published afterwards




You see, if someone hacks my bank account and changes balance of 1000 to 100 (by transferring 900), I will know afterwards. If someone hacks my e-voting machine and changes or deletes my vote, how will I ever know?

Most of the machines have live paper printouts on the back as votes are cast, with timestamps and a person at the count centre normally asks some random people to confirm their vote, writes it down and tally's it with the printout and then the stored electronic data. Any inconsistency and you disregard the result but you'd want to be very good to beat that triple check.

LuckyLloyd

There’s no appetite across the electorate or public life for e voting lads. Move it to another thread I’d say - it’s very much a self contained rabbit hole of conversation.

Christy42

So what coalition will appear in the EU? Center right and center left was traditional.

Maybe add in the greens or Macrons liberals to make up the numbers?

Eric Cartman

Christy42 wrote: »

So what coalition will appear in the EU? Center right and center left was traditional.

Maybe add in the greens or Macrons liberals to make up the numbers?

afd and the brexit party kicking all the migrants back to africa ?

kippy

eagle eye wrote: »

Yes, but that's completely different. It's run by a for profit professional organisation.
Walking into any public sector office that you can and see how archaic their systems are.

You've never used, revenue.ie, mygovid.ie, mywelfare.ie then.

You'd want to work in some banks, no more than the public service, some of their software/backends are as archaic as you'd get anywhere - well matched.

kippy

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

There’s no appetite across the electorate or public life for e voting lads. Move it to another thread I’d say - it’s very much a self contained rabbit hole of conversation.

Ah yeah, fair enough, there have been a few threads over the years on it no harm to split the discussion out to another one.
I'm neither for or against e-voting, but there are a lot of misconceptions on all sides out there.

alan partridge aha

alan partridge aha wrote: »

Going by this the could have a big say in next election. We are doing the right thing voting green until the taxes hit hard.

So the results of this weekend have no bearing on the comment, just some vague threat of possible futures?

Donald Trump

Eric Cartman wrote: »

Most of the machines have live paper printouts on the back as votes are cast, with timestamps and a person at the count centre normally asks some random people to confirm their vote, writes it down and tally's it with the printout and then the stored electronic data. Any inconsistency and you disregard the result but you'd want to be very good to beat that triple check.

How does your system catch this then. I hack the machine software to correctly print out Eric Cartman's votes, but to incorrectly and randomly record 10% of them as voting for Donald Trump.


What you have said basically involves accosting random people to demand to know how they vote.



So you decide a level of statistical significance and your measured discrepancy exceeds this so that you conclude something is up. What do you do then? Have another polling day on paper?


The only way to make it a bit more robust is to have it 100% anonymous. And even then you might get chancers saying "I didn't vote for that person" because maybe their first choice got too many votes and, had they known that, they'd have preferred to give their second choice the benefit of their full vote.

Christy42

Eric Cartman wrote: »

afd and the brexit party kicking all the migrants back to africa ?

They have no where near the numbers? Especially by the time anything happens the Brexit party politicians will be jobless (if all goes well for them) and so depending on them for votes won't go so well in the EU!

Plus the far right groups have not shown the ability to work together yet anyway and I have strong doubts it will ever happen.

Fan of Netflix

Brexit party will be gone in October, PM Boris will bring them out on no deal. Will be him or some other hardcore brexiteer.

eagle eye

kippy wrote:

You've never used, revenue.ie, mygovid.ie, mywelfare.ie then.

I've used all but mywelfare and I've encountered problems with them all.

eagle eye

Fan of Netflix wrote:

Brexit party will be gone in October, PM Boris will bring them out on no deal. Will be him or some other hardcore brexiteer.

I'd say Gove.

Squatter

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

There’s no appetite across the electorate or public life for e voting lads. Move it to another thread I’d say - it’s very much a self contained rabbit hole of conversation.

Nor for nuclear power (the fools!)

Nonetheless, that shouldn't stop the discussion from taking place - otherwise we really are sticking our heads down the rabbit hole!

Maybe if one of the counts or re-counts goes on until Wednesday or beyond, we can think about it again.

On a related point, there's often a load of argy-bargy about the validity or otherwise of spoiled votes - and sometimes high-powered lawyers are called in; I assume that, short of spilling coffee into the voting machine, it's almost impossible to spoil an e-vote!

Squatter

eagle eye wrote: »

I've used all but mywelfare and I've encountered problems with them all.

As a former IT man, I tend to blame the user!

alchemist33

Naomi Long (alliance) on course to take the UUP seat in the North. It won't count for much when they leave but may be a sign of progress.I'd prefer if she was taking a DUP seat but you can't have everything.

eagle eye

Squatter wrote:

As a former IT man, I tend to blame the user!

Ha, you'd normally be right but not in this instance.

CiarraiAbu2

40,000 doubtful ballot papers in the south, 25,000 were left blank. That is some amount of spoilt votes