[LINK] NSW evoting system for next state election

[Bernard Robertson-Dunn]

On 2/04/2014 2:41 PM, Jim Birch wrote:
> I would have thought that the key to honest elections is institutional:
> having an strong, open and independent electoral process, backed up by free
> citizen oversight.
>
> Australia does very well at this.  I can't see that computerising voting
> will make a difference and it could improve auditability.

I can see a huge difference - it reduces trust in the system.

The current system is manual. That manual effort is provided by many 
people in the community who are directly involved in the process of 
administering an election, and therefore the system is both transparent 
and difficult to compromise. The level of trust is high. Sure they 
sometimes get it wrong, it's slow, but people trust it.

Computerised voting significantly reduces transparency and trust.

There are two ways to influence the outcome of an election. You control 
who can stand and/or you control the counting. Computerising the 
counting allows for the potential to computerise the influence.

-- 

Regards
brd

Bernard Robertson-Dunn
Sydney Australia
email: brd at iimetro.com.au
web:   www.drbrd.com
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