[LINK] Fwd: [POB] No Voting Machines in Amsterdam

[Jan Whitaker]

from an occassional Link reader who sent along to me to show what is 
going on in Amsterdam.
Jan

>Date: Nov 21, 2006 8:08 PM
>Subject: [POB] No Voting Machines in Amsterdam
>
>Tomorrow will be parliamentary election day in The Netherlands. Most of my
>compatriots will vote by voting machine, but not us in Amsterdam.
>
>When I was young, all voting was done on a sheet of paper by a large red
>pencil to fill in a dot in front of one's favorite candidate. Such sheets
>were huge: there are some 40 parties participating and each party lists
>dozens of candidates to choose from. So after having filled in that one
>dot (in my case this time candidate #2 of list #7), we fold the sheet and
>put it in a locked box and leave. In the evening the boxes are emptied and
>the sheets unfolded.
>Then begins the problem: where the h*** did this voter put his/her dot?
>Luckily over 90% of the voters choose the numbers 1 or 2 of lists 1-10, so
>mostly it takes less than one second to find it and put the sheet on its
>proper stack. But sometimes somebody is happy to give his/her vote to a
>cousin on #13 of list #24 or #24 of #13, which may take a minute to spot!
>Later these stacks wil be checked by another official and counted
>(twice!). Obviously this is a boring and time consuming process, so since
>the 1970s voting machines have been introduced to speed things up.
>
>However not everybody blindly trusts voting machines and in Amsterdam we
>are a suspicious and critically minded bunch of not very authority
>trusting individuals. So until last year we resisted the introduction of
>voting machines, sticking to the good old paper and pencil. Now in the
>past voting stations closed at 18:00, so there was ample time for this
>longish counting and mostly the results from Amsterdam would be in before
>midnight as one of the last in the nation. But recently the law has
>changed and nowadays ballots must remain open until 20:00, so it is no
>longer reasonably possible to vote on paper and have the counts in the
>same evening, as is desired. So earlier this year in Amsterdam we had
>voting machines for a first time in a local election.
>
>However these voting machines (of a new model not yet in use elsewhere)
>are no good. There is no controlslip coming out confirming to me how I
>voted, a slip that might be put in a locked box for optional later
>checking. The authorities said this was legally not necessary. An
>independent agency has checked the software and says it can be tempered
>with. The authorities said this was untrue. Technicians with scanners
>found out that the machines produce electric pulses that may be detected
>at a distance of 40 meters, pulses that reveal what party an individual
>voter elected. The authorities said that this was no infringement on the
>secret ballot. So all three issues were brought to court and the judge on
>all three points ruled against the authorities: these machines are banned.
>This was only four weeks ago so there was no time to procure other, good
>voting machines. As a result the council of Amsterdam had quickly
>traditional paper voting sheets printed and placed an order for several
>thousands of red pencils: we will vote manually once again and the results
>will not be in before the next morning. That will teach them!

Jan Whitaker
JLWhitaker Associates, Melbourne Victoria
jwhit at janwhitaker.com
business: http://www.janwhitaker.com
personal: http://www.janwhitaker.com/personal/
commentary: http://janwhitaker.com/jansblog/

'Seed planting is often the most important step. Without the seed, 
there is no plant.' - JW, April 2005
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