Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I express my appreciation to the Leader of the Seanad, Senator O'Rourke, for organising this debate, which we have sought for some time. I acknowledge her efforts in acceding to the Members' request in this regard. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, to the House. It is unfortunate that the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Cullen, is not here as I prepared on the basis of speaking directly to him.

It is interesting that the argument being used in some quarters to support electronic voting is that it is being done in the Netherlands, Germany or the UK. We all know the experience of the judicial system in the United Kingdom, which incarcerated those such as the Birmingham six and the Guildford four. We will not necessarily emulate that system. It is possible to smoke cannabis in the street in the Netherlands — it is not illegal. Does that mean we will all smoke cannabis after we vote electronically in June? It is a lazy argument to justify doing it here because it is being done in those countries.

There has been some good scientific research in this area. I believe in the spirit of electronic voting for a multiplicity of reasons. However, I disagree with the manner in which it is being introduced. Much of the scientific research in this regard is being ignored. I know it worked well on a pilot basis at the last general election. There is a very good case to be made for electronic voting on the basis of the count in the Cork SouthCentral constituency where two candidates slogged it out for two weeks, which was inhumane. That is not a satisfactory way for candidates to fight for the last seat. This was one of the failings of the manual system. On the other hand, we had the infamous announcement of the result in the Dublin North constituency and the shock and horror that was visited on one of the candidates.

Electronic voting was used extensively in the second referendum on the Nice treaty in a number of the commuter areas and in many Dublin constituencies. However, during thatcontest some areas experienced failures of the system, to which I will refer shortly. It is not wise to ignore the scientific research. There have been comprehensive reports by computer scientists in NUI Maynooth and by experts who have observed the American, British, German andpresumably Dutch systems. It would be anti-democratic for us to end up with a system such as that used in Florida where the person with most votes was not deemed elected. The most powerful figure on the globe is in his position because of the failure of an electronic voting system. The State has not learned from those notorious examples.

The manner of introduction of the systemborders on arrogance. I do not suggest that the Minister, Deputy Cullen, is trying to do anything other than improve the system. However, there is an arrogant manner which is clouding the judgment of the Minister in introducing electronic voting. The Minister of State, Deputy Gallagher, mentioned a voter verifiable audit trail in his introduction. The absence of such an audit trail means that the openness and transparency, which characterised the traditional manual system, are now consigned to history. To build any trust in the system, this area needs to be considered.

There is a growing level of international and local support calling for the VVAT to be part of all electronic systems. The basic principle of voter verifiable audit trail is to ensure that each voter can be 100% certain his or her vote has been recorded accurately and has been included in the count. This is not the case at present. The absence of these formal control processes and procedures around the usage of the current system exposes the electoral process to possible interference from unauthorised persons.

Documentation released by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government indicates there are no formal processes for restricting access to count centre PCs during the count, installation of software on count centre PCs, verification of software installation on count PCs and of voting machines, or purchasing of ballot modules, which are the memory devices needed in the voting machines. It would be advisable to suspend electronic voting until a voter verifiable audit trail is available to give each voter absolute confidence in the system and a guarantee that their votes have been recorded and counted.

Appropriate control processes and procedures should be implemented by the Department with audit and supervisory responsibility vested in an independent body. That body could be one such as the Standards in Public Office Commission. Integrated end-to-end testing including statistical analysis of the randomisation feature must be carried out to verify the accuracy of the entire system. The Department should commit to providing full details of tally information in a database form after each election.

Will we be able to get access to tally figures after the system is used in June? The accuracy of the tallymen and tally women was an integral part of the manual system and, depending on thesuccess or otherwise of the candidate, added to the excitement of the count. It was an important facet of Irish elections when that system was used. There may have been constitutional issues with the operation of tally people as long as we have had elections. It was probably never challenged as it benefited all political parties and none.

One of the myths about e-voting is that we trust computers for e-commerce and e-banking. I do not and I know very few people who do. When I withdraw money from an ATM, I count the cash and check the slip. I know very few people who blindly — metaphorically speaking — insert their cards and trust the machine to dispense the correct amount of money. Those who know about computers know they are capable of creating errors. Humans make errors and humans make computers. Therefore, computers can make errors. I do not trust that system.

There is no evidence to support the assertion that e-voting will encourage voter participation. E-voting without adequate checks and balances will only undermine voter trust in the system. It is a myth to suggest that the Irish e-voting system is open to independent scrutiny. Even the Government will not have full details of the e-voting software until four months after the election.

Another myth propounded is that the Irish e-voting system has been developed to the highest possible standard. The developers of the Irish e-voting system have not come close to bestpractice in developing critical systems. Thesystem utilises low grade software and runs on ordinary desktop computers. The statement that the system was tested successfully at the lastgeneral election is another myth. The tests showed that the machines did not fail in any obvious way but, on closer examination, one discovered that there were a number of flaws. There is no proof that the machines correctly recorded all the votes cast. This could only be done if an independent paper record of each vote was checked by the voter and placed in a ballot box. It should also be noted that the software has gone through many changes since the last time it was used.

There is an issue surrounding the use of receipts. Some people say it would endanger the secrecy of the ballot but I do not accept that because scientific research proves otherwise. There is no proposal for voters to take home the paper receipt. Rather, the proposal is that the paper ballots be stored in sealed ballot boxes with all of the security and secrecy used in the current paper-only system. I fervently believe that the absence of that process will be detrimental to the success of the system.

In one incident, a failure occurred in a ballot module in Dublin South West. It was used at St. Paul's senior and junior primary schools, Limekiln. It had a "blocked check sum — not in order" failure and was sent to Nedap-Powervote for a report. This shows that computer systems can fail and that part of the Irish system has done so already.

In 1996, a US Senator had shares in the company which produced the machines that counted the votes in the Senate election in which he was the victor. Who owns the shares in the numerous companies involved in the Irish system, including Nedap-Powervote and the Irish and UK arms of that company? There could be a conflict of interest, of which we have seen enough in both Houses in recent years. I would be particularly interested to know what security is used to protect each vote in the access database.

Why is there such a rush to implement this system when we are conscious that good advice is being ignored? Why has the Department not carried out a critical cost-benefit analysis? I do not think a proper risk assessment been carried out on the scheme. Has the Comptroller and Auditor General carried out a value for money audit on the system? If so, what is the result and can we have the report?

These are just some of the 41 questions submitted to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment and Local Government which have never been answered. The system was accepted by a vote on the committee but that vote was split down the middle, with the Government barely scraping a marginal victory. I would appreciate it if the Minister of State answered and addressed some of those questions.