Michael McCarthy (Labour)

At present, when an election is called we present ourselves at our polling station. We may or may not have our polling card, we are marked off the register and we witness this. We receive our ballot paper, go behind a screen and cast our vote in a box — a box that is now probably in an auctioneer's hall down in Drimoleague in west Cork. Nonetheless, we trust in the system to the point where we can go home, witness the opening of the boxes in the count centre the following morning, see the ballot papers on the table and receive the information from the tallies all morning. This is how the manual system operates. It has been tried and tested and has produced a level of public confidence that electronic voting certainly could not even aspire to produce. We can see democracy in action from the very beginning, and from the announcements on the various counts to the filling of the seats.

The point Senator Quinn makes about the running of both systems together is very good. It will not be 100% accurate — Senator Brady is quite correct in saying this — because of differences in the two systems. Under the existing system, a bunch of votes is randomly selected for use in the distribution of a surplus. There is no doubt about that but parallel testing inspires public confidence in the fact that the systems, run alongside each other, are accountable, accurate, fool-proof, etc.

It was the failure of the system in Florida that led to the success of the candidate who did not have the highest number of first-preference votes. We want to avoid this at all costs. It was appallingly bad.

On the transportation of votes, every time the Garda transfers a ballot box to Clonakilty council offices, I trust it 100%. We have very little choice but to do so.

One important feature of the commission set up to examine this matter and which has issued its report is that the Governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, was not on it.