Friday, March 11, 2005
Japan - court voids e-vote
The Nagoya High Court on Wednesday declared void a city assembly election held in Kani, Gifu Prefecture in July 2003 after finding a temporary malfunction of electronic voting machines had gravely affected the election result.
According to the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry, the ruling is the first to nullify the result of an election using an electronic voting system.
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A total of 189 electronic voting machines were set up at 29 polling places for the city assembly election held on July 20, 2003.
But the voting system was halted temporarily for between nine minutes and 83 minutes due to overheating of the servers and other reasons.
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Prof. Shigeki Yokoi of Nagoya University's graduate school said the Kani municipal government did not hold a trial election to verify whether the voting system properly worked. He said it was necessary for municipal and prefectural governments planning to employ electronic voting to test the system thoroughly. He added the central government should provide financial help for the introduction of electronic voting system because they are expensive.
Electronic voting: it's expensive, it's untested, and it doesn't work.
Court nullifies e-voting election result Daily Yomiuri On-Line March 10, 2005.
Thursday, March 10, 2005
Maryland e-voting
A review of voting machines used in Maryland's most populous county for the November elections found that 7 percent of the machines had problems such as frozen screens or failed to boot up.
An additional 5 percent in Montgomery County had vote tallies that were considerably lower than other machines used in the same precincts, causing elections officials to deem them ``suspect,'' according to the report released Tuesday. It was drafted by the county in December for the local election board.
But state officials disputed those figures, saying a review of the county's machines conducted by the state and the equipment's manufacturer showed that only 0.4 percent had significant problems in the Nov. 3 election.
from Report shows problems with some Maryland e-voting machines March 9, 2005
municipal e-voting in Japan
The municipal government of Niimi, Okayama Prefecture, which held the nation's first elections using electronic voting, will return to the traditional handwritten voting system for its April 24 mayoral and city assembly elections, following a merger with four neighboring municipalities.
The municipal government, which used the electronic voting system for its past two elections, proposed the electronic system for upcoming elections to the four municipalities that will merge on March 31.
However, the plan was rejected on the ground that there was not enough time to prepare for the next election.
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The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry's election department said 10 municipalities had used e-voting in 12 elections and predicted that the system would become widely used in the future.
from Daily Yomiuri On-Line
