Jason Kitcat

Wired News are reporting in their sidebar that Ohio's e-voting machines are replaced with optical-scan machines. Better late than never!

The full text from Wired:

Ohio may be the home of Diebold, the most prominent manufacturer of touch-screen voting machines, but the Buckeye State is jumping off the e-voting bandwagon, at least for now. Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell ordered all counties to be using optical-scan machines (which provide paper ballots) by next November's election, the Toledo Blade reported Thursday. Blackwell, who had threatened to pull the plug on e-voting machines prior to the presidential election, said he was acting because not one of the machines is “certified under Ohio's standards and rules.” A lot of Democrats are probably wishing he had pulled the trigger a bit sooner.

I find it absolutely astonishing how many people are falling for the utter drivel that is Scytl’s marketing guff. Their product does not verify that votes are accurately stored and counted as the voter intended. This is the essence of reliable, democratic voting and they don’t do it.

Scytl’s MD says “Whereas in physical elections you put your vote in a paper envelope, with Pnyx you put it in a digital envelope that provides the same level of security and privacy. Essentially we recreated the physical world in an online environment”. Hombre, that is a load of manure, the same level of security and privacy? Not a chance.

So you can imagine I’m delighted to hear that Scytl have won a European IST Prize. There’s a sucker born every minute it would seem.

That's basically what the Government has said in it's very very long awaited responses to the Electoral Commission's hard work.

Kable have a good summary of the situation with some extra quotes. I would love to dissect the Government's reports and report on the Kreminology of the whole affair but I'm moving at the moment and really can't spare the time. Ikea wardrobes don't build themselves you know!

The Times has a good article on the Government's obsession with boosting turnout hence their continuously trying to force postal ballots. As many of the people they quoted comment, it's a bit odd to undermine confidence in the electoral process in favour of a few extra percentage points of turnout.

Louise Ferguson has links to a Radio 4 piece on all-postal voting which I haven't had a chance to listen to but I'm sure must be good if Louise recommends it.

PublicTechnoloy has an article on the reports which leads on the need for a centralised electoral register. This project was once called LASER but now is known as CORE, if it ever happens then it will be another national ID database of sorts. Oh joy. The key point is that while e-voting is on hold CORE could re-awaken e-voting pilots once completed. Oh more joy.

The two government reponses are on the Department for Constitutional Affairs' website here and here

A bit unexpected but good news I think… there will be a Parliamentary inquiry into e-voting early next year. It will be run by the House of Commons Constitutional Affairs Committee with a sub-committee of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Hopefully it will be an open and frank exploration of the issues. Submissions can be made until 14th January 2005 to odpmcom@parliament.uk

Reports: Industry Standard and TechWorld