The Irish Are Smarter Than Us, E-Vote Edition

BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUL 2, 2012

From across the pond comes the news that the Motherland has abandoned its e-voting machines. Basically, the Irish are dumping the e-voting technology because its too damned expensive and too damned riddled with glitches to be trusted to count elections accurately. The machines are going to be busted up and sold for scrap metal, a fate which, in fact, may be too good for them....

Plans to roll out the machines on a national basis in the 2004 local and European elections were abandoned by the then minister for the environment, Martin Cullen, after a report from an independent commission raised issues about their reliability. Amidst mounting concerns over their reliability and storage costs (which, in the years 2004 to 2008 were €658,000, €696,000, €706,000, €489,000 and €204,000 respectively) the idea of e-voting was finally scrapped in 2009. The same fate now awaits the machines themselves.

Canada already dumped this technology. So has the Netherlands. Now the Irish have joined the parade. This should be a helluva lot bigger story in this country than it is because... wait for it... we use the same technology. We have essentially privatized the most fundamental feature of the political commonwealth — our right to be governed by the people we actually elect, and we've handed it over to people who shouldn't be trusted to make toasters. This, to me, would qualify as bigger news than Willard Romney's ongoing stumble through that rake-filled yard we call The English Language.

Up the Republic!
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a14688/electronic-voting-ireland-10251126/