A chara, - A. Leavy (August 11th) argues against introducing electronic voting.
He writes that independent analysis of such a system would not be permitted. Perhaps it slipped me by, but I do not recall the Government announcing that it intended to block such access. Indeed, it would seem to be against every democratic principle to do so.
He also draws attention to the fact that an electronic voting system would be vulnerable to power cuts. This is indeed the case but one would assume that, as with many critical electronic systems, such as those used in hospitals, back-up auxiliary power would be put in place.
Lastly, Mr Leavy says that any such system would be vulnerable to "hackers". Hackers are generally active on the public internet and to a lesser extent the public telephone network. One would assume that the Government would not use either of these publicly accessible communications networks to carry election results, but rather employ a series of private point-to-point circuits to transmit the data.
In any event, one expects that any such data would be encrypted with so-called "strong" encryption algorithms, ensuring that even if the system was compromised all a "hacker" could achieve would be to disrupt the signal, in which case a physical backup could be securely transported to the count centre, as is currently done with ballot boxes.
I can understand the kind of concerns that many people have about switching to an electronic voting system. However I think if they were to study the technology currently available to do so, and the utter simplicity of any software required, they would agree that such a system would be at the very least as secure and transparent as our current system, if not more so. - Is Mise,
CATHAL MOONEY, Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9.