Madam, - I am currently reading an article on electronic voting in this month's edition of IEEE Spectrum, the flagship journal of the main engineering and computer society in the US. The following sentences are taken from the first page of the article with no comments from me.
"Unfortunately, recent evidence suggests that although we may be ready for electronic voting, the technology is not ready for us ... in their hurry to avoid paper ... some equipment makers and election officials are rushing to deploy systems that have known flaws or that have been poorly tested - or not tested at all.
"Officials are knowingly giving up the ability to perform an independent recount - a fundamental requirement for ensuring the integrity of the votes recorded by a voting machine, and for reconstructing the tally if an election is contested. People using these direct-recording systems will have no assurance that their ballots were cast at all, let alone as intended. And it is likely that some machines will fail, if the record of recent local and other elections is any guide.
"Astonishing as it may seem, a world with automated teller machines that dispense cash flawlessly and ticket-selling kiosks that accept and count bills and coins of every denomination still hasn't produced electronic voting machines that are robustly reliable and with counts independently verifiable. Computer scientists, such as David Chaum, the inventor of digital cash, are working on the problem, but solutions are years away." - Yours, etc.,
Dr TONY PARTRIDGE, Institute of Technology, Sligo.