Addendum to Graeme's post: The Australian Capital Territory (our smallest jurisdiction in both population and area -- constitutionally equivalent to Washington DC, but socio-economically equivalent to Cambridge, Massachusetts) experimented with touch-screen electronic voting at its latest Territorial election in October 2001. The initial press releases were at

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/media9901.html

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/media0008.html

http://www.elections.act.gov.au/media0104.html

-- although these are old links: I could find more recent details if anyone's interested.

Like Cambridge, the ACT uses single transferable vote in multi-member constituencies (5, 5, and 7 seats), which makes them even braver for experimenting with electronic voting -- since one common reason offered in Australia for keeping to paper ballots, apart from cost, is that all our jurisdictions use preferential voting in some form. Voting machines as used in the USA do seem to simplify voting when a society is using first-past-the-post for a number of positions, but adapting them to preferential systems would be more complicated.

At 12:12 20-09-2002 +1000, Graeme Orr wrote:

Australia too is all paper-ballots.  And we even provide pencils, not pens, to mark ballots!    The AEC long ago realised the best way of avoiding Floridian debacles was to stay with the simplest, 'failsafest' technology.       The anti-fraud safeguards, they would say, lie in systemic reform - eg in having the most independent, incorruptible, professional and co-ordinated (if not nationalised) electoral administration you can achieve.    At least no-one would claim Canadians/Australians are somehow culturally less inclined to rort.

(Paper ballots also ensure that the bedrock search for 'the intention of the voter' remains central.  Australians by and large found it hard to fathom how US electoral law could deny Gore's plaint, at least if he had been demanding a manual recount of the whole state - which after all was the relevant electorate, and not just selected counties).

Graeme Orr
Lecturer, Law
Griffith University
Brisbane  4111
Australia

Rick Hasen <rick.hasen@lls.edu>
Sent by: owner-election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu

20/09/2002 03:42 AM
Please respond to rick.hasen

        To:        "election-law@majordomo.lls.edu" <election-law@majordomo.lls.edu>
        cc:
        Subject:        Computers Criticized in Fla. Voting

Here's another call for paper ballots.  Isn't anyone worried about the
potential for fraud in the hand counting of all ballots? I know Canada
conducts its national elections with paper, but they don't have the same
history of voter fraud.