Madam, - At the risk of being called a Luddite I would like to express concern over the proposed move to electronic voting.
If the Government proposed to employ a private company to introduce a system for counting paper votes where they were allowed to take all the votes in an election to a location where they would be counted in secret and only the result announced, there would be outrage at the attack on our democratic system. This is in effect what is happening through the introduction of electronic voting.
The software program to be used remains the copyright of the company designing the system. There are to be no paper votes produced to check the accuracy of the proposed system unless required by court order.
Anyone who has used a computer over the last 15 years will be aware that software programs do not always do what their designers intend and there are inevitably conflicts between programs and errors in the writing of code. In any organisation where systems are computerised it is often advisable to maintain a paper-based system of administration in tandem with the new computer system to ensure the accuracy of the computerised system.
The Government in its wisdom has decided not to follow this course but to change completely to computerised voting at the next election.
The current system may not be perfect but the counting of votes is carried on in view of the public. There is a paper trail from the marking of the ballot paper in the polling station to declaring the successful candidates elected. The move to electronic voting will remove this paper trail and will inevitably undermine the public confidence in the system of voting. - Yours etc.,
PAUL FLANAGAN,
Castlewood Park,
Rathmines,
Dublin 6.