A quick round-up of coverage on the 2007 e-voting pilots announcement.
In other news, I'm afraid it looks like Ireland are going try to use their e-voting machines again:
The Times reports today that the UK will be investigated by the Council of Europe for electoral fraud and alleged breaches of human rights. The announcement currently relates specifically to postal vote related fraud particularly the aftermath of the infamous Birmingham postal vote fraud case which caused Labour serious embarrassment and lead to outspoken comments from presiding Judge Richard Mawrey:
“Anybody who has sat through the case I have just tried and listened to evidence of electoral fraud that would disgrace a banana republic would find [government assurances about postal voting] surprising” (Source: BBC)
Postal voting is extremely problematic, particularly when an election is all-postal. However electronic voting creates the opportunities for fraud on a much wider scale whilst being considerably harder to detect. Additionally remote electronic voting continues to breach human rights treaties demanding a secret ballot. So, given yesterday's announcement of pilots in 2007, I hope this investigation is widened to include electronic voting.
(Thanks to Ian Brown for the tip-off)
Sorrow of sorrows but in spite of all the evidence showing that e-voting is A Bad Idea, today the Department for Constitutional Affairs has announced plans for electronic voting pilots to be held in May 2007 and are inviting proposals.
The prospectus states:
Research for the Electoral Commission released in 2003 shows there is significant
demand for electronic voting and that it may help stem the declining turnout at elections.
Yet the Electoral Commission’s own figures for the 2003 pilots showed that e-voting had no significant impact on turnout (more info)
It would seem that a year makes all the difference as in September 2005 Harriet Harman MP, a minister responsible said to Radio 4 that:
“We just think that the time is not right for it (e-voting) at the moment. We talked to a lot of people, we listened to a lot of views including from the Conservative Party. The general consensus seemed to be that the time is not right for it at the moment. So we are not going ahead with the pilots that we were planning to run otherwise in the May 2006 council elections.” (Source: The Independent)
What has changed since Ms Harman said those words, I do not know. Since 2003 The Electoral Commission have been repeatedly calling for a clear framework or road-map to be set out by government but nothing has emerged. Still they seem to be happily going along with these pilots. Why?
Some good news is that SMS, digital TV and all-postal voting have all been ruled out for 2007. Sense prevailed there thank goodness!
Despite repeated criticism from The Electoral Commission, suppliers, councils and qualified observers such as myself, the timetable is again tight. Applications close 17th November leaving the usual scant time for supplier selection, contractual agreements and technical work to be completed. Indeed the prospectus timetable leaves only February and March for development and testing – madness!. This process should, at the latest, have been begun in the summer. Also with the central electronic voter register project stalled, I wonder if now is a good time to be piloting anything?
Immediate Action
Please write to your local councillors asking them to ensure that your local council does not waste tax payer money and risk the integrity of elections by applying to run a pilot.
Use WriteToThem for quick access to your local councillors.
Learn more:
The uncertain nature of elections to come [PDF] – detailed report on the serious failings in the planning, management and implementation of the 2003 pilots
Electronic Voting Doesn’t work – written for Electoral Reform Society
LEARN: I want to understand the issues – learn about the pros and cons of voting methods
I have a backlog of posts and my lustrous new iMac is to blame. In a very good way.
For the past 3 years I have been using a 15″ PowerBook G4 whose 1Ghz processor had been feeling wheezy for the last year. But worse still, the hard disk was always full and I had filled every FireWire disk I could find too… If one thing OS X doesn't do well with, it's a full hard disk. Slooooow.
So I was very keen to get a MacBook Pro when they emerged from Cupertino, for the love of God they are up to five times faster! But wait, no FireWire 800 port? Just an Expresswhat slot? Not for me, at all. When the 17-incher slipped out with a FireWire 800 port I began to be tempted but I would wait for a second revision to iron out bugs before I fell for it. And I waited…
In the meantime my desktop consisted of:
It was a nice setup but a bit, cluttered and cable infested. I was sitting there one day waiting for a call wondering when the MacBook Pros would be updated when I realised that I was never disconnecting the PowerBook from its umbilical cords. The laptop was never moving, I was happily using my BlackBerry to take notes in meetings. Hmmmm… did I need another laptop after all?
Steve Jobs must have been aware of this dilemma from a hardened laptop owner (2 PowerBooks, 1 tangerine iBook and some PC laptops best not mentioned). He knew what I wanted because he unleashed the beast I'm now typing on… the 24″ iMac.
FireWire 800 port – check, big fat 500GB hard disk – check, Core 2 Duo – check, dual layer DVD burning – check. American Express – warming up.
There were only 2 things I did actually use the PowerBook for off the desktop – presentations and emptying my camera of images when on holiday. The new 80GB iPod solved this by being able to display and store photos and movies. The iPod Camera Connector is just a USB dongle but it works and needs no extra batteries or removing of memory cards like the old Belkin iPod readers did – works a charm. (Note: The iPod's photos will only be recognised by iPhoto if you let the iPod be mounted as a disk – remember to click the new 'Apply' button in iTunes if you want this change to stick)
Anyway, one thing led to another, and needless to say Apple Developer Connection discount later I was checking my order status rather too often. Having souped the big fella up with extra everything I did wait a month to get it, in which time I swear my PowerBook actually did get still slower.
When UPS delivered I couldn't quite believe the size of the box. There's no two ways about this – it is HUGE. I didn't actually realise how big it would be – how much bigger than the 20 incher could it be? You can see the difference my friends. It's a bright, crisp monster of a display. A few days after I'd been using it I suddenly realised that it was bigger than the 'big' TV we have in the living room. Insane.
Truly it's a wonderful machine which has worked like a dream for me from the first instant. The out-of-the-box experience is, as everyone says, quite superb and welcoming. The 24W inbuilt speakers are punchy, much better than previous iMac speakers that I've heard.
I've been following Khoi Vinh's good then less good experiences with his 24-incher which arrived a bit before mine. I have to say it's all been good for me, really wonderful.
Performance has been impeccably fast. Transferring over from my PowerBook has been unbelievably hiccup-free, I'm astonished really. The only complete flop was that PGP 8 stopped working, breaking the built in support MailSmith has for PGP. I had a very bad feeling from reviews of PGP 9.5 which MailSmith doesn't support anyway so I switched to MacGPG very easily (though the preference pane doesn't work for me).
Everything else just worked, but still I spent a good couple of hours updating everything to make sure I had as many Universal versions as possible. Fireworks MX 2004 which has always been a performance dog turned out to be very snappy even under Rosetta. Khoi complained of Rosetta's performance but I've been absolutely astonished at how good it's been, I really have forgotten about it – it's an extraordinary technical triumph.
I chose to transfer files manually over FireWire 800 (wonderfully fast) and forgot a few at first but I'm happier doing this than letting Apple's tool do it, I had some UNIXy things that would have been left behind.
I only have one remaining fly in the ointment. I've setup a RAID array of two 1 Terabyte LaCie drives but scheduled backups crash the wonderful SuperDuper The nice SuperDuper people reckon it's an Apple bug so I'm on manual backups until an update emerges.
My desktop now has only the iMac, wireless keyboard and wireless mighty mouse. That's it. Truly wonderful and it has proven extremely productive. I was transferred in less than a day and have been doing lots and lots of work since. Money well spent then!
I've now put online my last six columns for LinuxUser magazine. Writing a monthly column has been a fun experience and a good challenge in writing – I've had to submit the words each month as opposed to posting when the inspiration comes to me.
I must say that the several months when I felt without a topic, often it was knowing that I had to write which made me come up with some of my favourite columns. So there is something in that advice to new writers to just keep on writing.
In other news I've revamped the links to blog entries, making them much shorter – but old format links will still work. This should all be reflected automatically in menus and the RSS feed but do let me know if you find any oddities.
When, at the University of Warwick, I began my academic life back in 1997, I was astonished at how bad reference management software was.
Pretty much everyone recommended using EndNote. But I soon learnt that this wasn't because they liked it. It was because everyone else used it so if you wanted help or to share reference files, EndNote was your best option.
But, in this writer's humble opinion, EndNote's interface is an unequivocal disaster. The software is also slow and just feels heavy on your computer. It's expensive but at least they do Windows and Mac versions.
I was pretty distraught each time I had to do some serious referencing until, somehow, I came across BookEnds four years ago. BookEnds works how I expect referencing software to work. It's easy to use, flexible and powerful… it's fast and affordable. The developer is friendly and responsive and new versions are regularly released. In other words, joy of joys, I can enjoy referencing again.
I'm straining every cell of my will-power to finish my doctorate this year. So anything that helps with my daily writer's block is extremely welcome indeed.
While nothing will prevent the incredible procrastination skills that develop as the thesis crisis deepens, even the smallest aid is helpful.
The recently released WriteRoom is not just an aid, it's a productivity hand-grenade. An interface-free typing space, it's a full-screen textual experience which gives you no choice but to get on with the work of typing.
Sure you could approximate the experience in Word with a lot of preferences faffing and closing palettes. But somehow knowing that you just can't bold, bullet and border something lightens the load.
Best yet, WriteRoom is free so enjoy.
(DarkRoom is a free Windows clone of WriteRoom for those that way inclined)
I've been cutting back our military spending, reducing our air pollution and increasing car taxes recently. No, thankfully I've not been elected to any position of power – I've been trying out Democracy, an incredible simulation that lets you run a country, or try to.
Call it “Edutainment” or a strategy game, Democracy is a really sophisticated and rich simulation which uses a neural net to perform its calculations. You play the Prime Minister (or President depending on the country you pick) and have to balance the budget, introduce or cancel policies and respond to events outside your control while keeping the diverse populace content enough to vote for you at the next election. Easy, right? Wrong.
The game is packed with pithy quotes from politicans. Like this erm… soundbite from Tony.
It's fun and very difficult, even on the easy setting! It's a superb learning tool which helps us all realise the hard choices and less than ideal compromises politicians are forced to make. It's a fantastic tool for all those aspiring politicians out there.
I boldly slashed defence spending only to be rocked by a terrorist attack in our capital. Cutting back on road building won me the fervent support of the greenies, but with 3 times as many motorists out there I was bleeding popularity points. Plus my renewable energy subsidies pollution controls were unbalancing the national budget. Yikes.
I decided against an Internet Tax in the end – thank goodness
The range of policies available is already good but even so the game developer has released instructions on how to modify the game to add new policies and other tweaks. The game also auto-updates with new policies and events direct from the developer.
Is this e-democracy? Perhaps not as it's just a simulation, though budget simulator games have been used in the UK e-democracy pilots to educate voters about the challenges their councils face. Either way I think it's a fantastic piece of software and wonderfully engaging for the political junkie in me. What's more the clear and approachable way in which policies, budgets and voters groups are presented should be inspirational for many future e-democracy applications.
Democracy, by Positech Games is available for Windows and Mac at a cost of £12.49 or $22.95. A free demo is available online for both platforms.
It has come to this I'm afraid… My wife has lost her pregnancy weight and I'm still flabby. My best suits don't fit anymore… and I have two weddings to attend this summer.
Yes it's time for radical, immediate action. With immediate notice I'm giving up all ice cream, ice cream derivatives and substitutes until my birthday, 14th September. At that point I will enjoy only in moderation with appropriate supervision.
Given the heat we're feeling in Brighton these days I know this will pose a serious challenge. I'm a big (yes, yes) Ben & Jerry's fan… I love the history of the company and I adore their creamy, chunky delights. I've had a history of eating a 500ml tub in one sitting. Let me report that I've now got this guzzling down to only a half-tub. Given the fat in just 100g of BJ goodies this is still very much not good.
The last few days I've been resisting all frozen temptations but today has been a real struggle. So before I cracked I decided to make it into a bit more of a definable journey instead of just 'resist, resist, must resist… oh sweet sweet ice cream, I still love you (then inaudible as face disappears into tub)'
My last dance with Ben & Jerry was their scarily moreish 'Wich – How the biscuit bit stays soft and chewy even though it's frozen, I don't want to know. It's all goooood. Probably best if I don't think about that too much.
So that's the plan. No ice cream until mid-September. I'll let you know what happens. I think my wife knows what to buy me for my birthday.
In the last twelve months I've nearly bought a new TV, two different digital video recorders, a Freeview box and a cable TV setup. I say nearly because in the final analysis I always worried that the kit would become obsolete rather too quickly.
We're in an industry crossfire of change – new standards and new ideas are bursting from every angle…
All this to say… I'm going to keep waiting until the dust settles. There's tons of innovation going on but also plenty of opportunity to get stuck in one of many technological dead ends.
Jason Kitcat 