Government to press ahead with electronic voting

The Government is to press ahead with plans to extend electronic voting across the State for next year's local and European elections, despite Opposition concern over the security of the system.

Fine Gael and Labour yesterday called for the national introduction of the system to be suspended until their concerns, such as the lack of paper-based records to accompany the casting of individual votes, were addressed.

The Minister for the Environment and Local Government, Mr Cullen, however, said such a measure would require primary legislation and he had full confidence in the existing electronic system.

Some 7,000 electronic voting machines, similar to those used previously in Germany and the Netherlands, will replace the manual ballot from next June at a cost of €36 million.

A €4.5 million public relations campaign will also be launched in the coming months, while members of the Oireachtas Committee on Environment and Local Government were yesterday given a demonstration of how the system will work.

However, Labour's spokesman on local government, Mr Eamon Gilmore, told the committee it would be "bad for democracy" if the Minister extended electronic voting nationwide in the face of Opposition fears over the system's security.

Fine Gael's spokesman on local government, Mr Bernard Allen, said paper-based records of voting, or an audit trail, were needed to ensure the process was tamper-proof.

Mr Cullen said a paper record of a person's vote, even if placed in a secure container for future checking, would flout a Supreme Court ruling protecting the anonymity of an individual's vote.

This was because there would be a direct link between the voter and the ballot paper.

He said it would be possible to manually recount votes if a recount was ordered as the system could print a ballot paper for each vote cast after voting was concluded.

However, he said the Government would consider new legislation after next year's elections to allow for the creation of paper records at the same time votes are cast.

Electronic voting was used in selected constituencies during the Nice Treaty referendum and the 2002 general election. Exit polls showed that 96 per cent of voters surveyed found the voting machine easy to use.

Mr Cullen said that next year the result of each count would be declared separately, and referred to the upsetting manner last year in which the former Fine Gael TD Ms Nora Owen discovered she lost her seat when the final result was suddenly declared.

The Minister also said he was responding to concerns from political parties over the lack of detailed tally information.

He said the issue was being examined by the Attorney General's office. However, the individual breakdown of results from ballot boxes with a small number of votes would not be disclosed to protect voter anonymity.