Those readers who may be about to turn to the back pages of this newspaper intending to do the crossword need to be aware that it appears our Taoiseach believes that in so doing they are using a "silly old system" which is "outdated", writes Noel Whelan.
Since Irish Times crosswords are now available electronically, those who still insist on completing them on paper with pen or pencil are living in the dark ages.
At least that's what the Taoiseach believes about the use of pen and pencils for voting. In Dáil exchanges last Tuesday, he found himself again unable to defend the e-voting system, so he resorted to absurd denunciations of the current pen and paper system.
It is the Government itself which is now being silly on this issue because they are following the outdated habit of refusing to admit they got it wrong. Surely if the Taoiseach and his colleagues have learned anything in recent weeks, it is that the public realise that to err is human. The Government should have the decency to admit their error of judgment on electronic voting, apologise for it and trust the voters to be proportionate in their response.
The one accurate point made by the Taoiseach was that the Opposition parties had originally favoured the introduction of electronic voting. Those of us who publicly opposed the e-voting system even before it was "tested" in three constituencies for the 2002 election remember ploughing a very lonely furrow. Much important work was subsequently done by the ad hoc group of computer experts in Irish Citizens for Trustworthy E-voting and others. Had their concerns been listened to earlier, we would not now be lumbered with thousands of voting machines comfortably resting in various luxury warehouses around the State at a cost of about €800,000 a year.
No system is absolutely perfect, but our "silly old system" enjoys public confidence precisely because it has built into it many measures designed specifically to ensure secrecy in the casting of votes and transparency in the counting of them.
Before polling begins, the ballot box is opened in the presence of staff and party agents who can confirm for themselves that it is empty. Each voter is issued with a ballot paper which is marked in absolute secrecy with the help of the lowly pencil. The voter then folds the ballot paper and puts it into the ballot box. From that moment it is random and cannot be traced back to an individual. That evening the ballot box is formally sealed, again in front of candidates' agents, and is transported overnight to the constituency count centre. The following morning the seal is broken and the boxes are opened in front of hundreds of tallymen. The papers in the box are counted to ensure that they coincide with the number of papers recorded as having gone into it the previous night. Over the course of the day, hundreds of pairs of eyes can, if they so choose, follow the progress of each ballot paper through every stage of the count. Any discrepancy with the ballot papers or the conduct of the count is identifiable.
By comparison, as things currently stand, there can be no certainty that a vote recorded on an e-voting machine is the one cast by the voter. The concerns voiced by some from the beginning were that the electronic voting machines, the count computer or the software could be deliberately or even accidentally corrupted or interfered with in a way which could go undetected.
The recent report of the Commission on Electronic Voting has now confirmed that those fears were well-founded.
On Dutch television last week, some of these e-voting machines were hacked into by a group who showed that the type of interference we always feared could be done relatively easily, in a manner which could alter the way the voter's choice was recorded and could even be done so as to enable details of a voter's choice to be remotely transmitted to someone else.
When it is not denigrating our current voting system, the Government resorts to bizarrely circular arguments about how, because they set up the Commission on Electronic Voting, they cannot now make the policy decision to abandon electronic voting. They do this even though the Commission on Electronic Voting was established just weeks before the system was due to be used nationwide in the 2004 local and European elections in response to a lack of public confidence. The commission was also established after Martin Cullen had repeatedly and stubbornly defended the absolute safety of what we now know to be a deeply flawed system.
Now a subcommittee of the Cabinet, no less, has been established to consider the implementation of improvements which the Commission on Electronic Voting has said are necessary to ensure even basic security. This, the Government says, is designed to be the first step in restoring public confidence with a view to using the system in the future. These Ministers - who must surely have more pressing priorities - are now to recruit a panel of international experts to do the job the commission recommended. The group will in the first instance cost the improvements, so that we can quantify how much good money needs to be thrown after bad.
Even though the Cabinet subcommittee has just begun its work, Minister for the Environment Dick Roche was confident on TV3 last weekend that the machines would be used in elections due to be held in 2009. Most voters will see this latest charade for what it is - an attempt to long-ball the ultimate decision to scrap this e-voting proposal well out past the next election in the hope that the current Government won't be blamed for wasting the money. It won't work and the Government should cut its political and financial losses now.