DERMOT KEARNEY,
Madam, - Electronic voting will be extended to the whole country by 2004. One might like to welcome its speed and efficiency, but its drawbacks point in the opposite direction.
Electronic voting is non-transparent. The suppliers of the software will hardly publish its codes and programmes, for if they did their commercial advantage would be lost. Even if the codes were published, they would be intelligible to only a minority of people. The same can be said of the hardware involved.
Anyone purchasing an electronic voting system must rely on assurances from the supplier about its performance. So it is doubtful if anyone can give a verifiably reliable guarantee that the new system will perform as it should. Any such guarantee would have to include publication of the codes and programmes, full details of the hardware and a convincing proof that future updates and improvements could not incorporate distortions.
Electronic voting is anything but foolproof. Flexibility is one of the advantages of computer codes; they can be tweaked to bring about a desired result. Tweaking can easily be hidden even from thorough scrutiny.
We have to accept that somebody somewhere may have a strong enough interest in an election or a referendum to want to influence the result. Given the kind of temptation that electronic voting, with its capacity for hidden manipulation, could present, is it wise to think again about our approach to future elections? Isn't it reasonable to say that any system which relies on hidden workings is at least potentially susceptible to corruption?
The speed of electronic voting is attractive, but speed is not the most desirable characteristic of democratic politics. Reliability and openness are more prized, and most people would agree that they are essential. We can only be sure of them in a completely transparent system. - Yours, etc.,
DERMOT KEARNEY, Milltown, Tuam, Co Galway.