Greens' boss saves voting machines from dump
ENVIRONMENT Minister John Gormley has rejected calls to scrap the State's 7,500 unused electronic voting machines.
Despite pressure from the opposition, the Green Party leader said he would not be forced into a knee-jerk reaction to dispose of the machines.
"We need to ascertain whether electronic voting is effective and whether we can gain public confidence in it. We have spent approximately €51.3m on these machines."
The machines were not used during the general election due to fears about their security and the lack of a paper trail. They are costing about €700,000 a year to store at an army base in Gormanstown, Co Meath, and in rented locations around the country.
Fine Gael had called for the machines to be scrapped after a Dutch judge has ruled that the e-voting machines used in his country's November and March elections were not adequately authorised and that at least one type of machine was not certified.
During his first time taking questions as Environment Minister, Mr Gormley said the Commission on Electronic Voting had concluded last year that the e-voting machine could be used if their software was replaced and if further testing was carried out. He had not yet received an official translation of a Dutch report, which found that the electronic voting machines were not secure because they did not have a verifiable paper trail.
"I understand the committee which prepared the report was established after last year's Dutch elections and that the Dutch Parliament will discuss the report in early December."
Incredible
Fine Gael environment spokesman Phil Hogan described this as an incredible admission. "Does the minister not have any colleagues in the Netherlands who can appraise him of the situation or, more importantly, are there no translators in the entire apparatus of the Irish Government that can translate the report?"
The entire e-voting project had been ill-thought-out and mismanaged, he said.
"In light of the Dutch experience, where e-voting has firmly been abandoned, and the Irish experience, where millions has been wasted and there is zero public confidence, it is high time e-voting is dropped before another series of blunders results in more money being sent down the drain."
