Seanad ReportThe answers to well over 100 questions on electronic voting were expected to be received soon by the Department of the Environment and Local Government, Minister of State Pat "The Cope" Gallagher told the House.
"We have circulated these questions and the documentation to a number of companies," he said. "There is a question of integrity here. We want to make sure that the answers are formulated, that they're absolutely in order, and we had to send them out to a number of companies and we hope to have those fairly soon."
The Minister rejected Opposition attempts to rule out electronic voting in the European and local elections next June. Refusing to accept a Labour Party attempt to have an electoral commission established to inquire into all aspects of electronic voting, Mr Gallagher said the proposed amendment to the European Parliament Elections (Amendment) Bill did not specify what an election commission was. There would be insufficient time to have such a body established by law before June.
He said that various independent bodies had reported on the reliability, security, integrity and verifiability of the system.
Mr Pat Moylan (FF) said a former leader of Fine Gael had been reported to have been very much in favour of electronic voting. That was a twist to the stance adopted by that party.
Mr Michael Brennan (FF) said the call by some Opposition members for a voting paper trail, was based on flawed thinking. The provision of a duplicate ballot paper would take the privacy of casting one's vote "out the door". He doubted if that would be possible under the Constitution.
Mr Michael McCarthy (Lab) said he had yet to be convinced that the software that was to be used would be capable of counting votes under our relatively unique system embodying proportional representation and the single transferrable vote in multi-seat constituencies.
Mr James Bannon (FG) stressed his party was on record as favouring electronic voting. But it believed the reliability and security of the system must first be guaranteed. He urged the Minister to revert to the paper ballot until the necessary safeguards for electronic voting were in place.