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Monday, October 30, 2006

Report on Quebec's municipal electronic voting disaster

On October 24, 2006 the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec released a report (in French only) "Report on the Evaluation of New Methods of Voting". In a press release, three root causes of problems with electronic voting machines in the 2005 municipal elections were identified:

* an imprecise legislative and administrative framework
* absence of technical specifications, norms and standards
* poor management of voting systems (especially lack of security measures)

He has recommended that the current moratorium on the use of these systems be maintained, and leaves it up to the provincial legislature to decide whether or not to use electronic voting in future.

(Above information copied from my additions to Wikipedia - Electronic voting in Canada.)

This was reported in the Canadian press starting on the 24th, see e.g.

RDI (French) - Des scrutins à jamais entachés - October 24, 2006 (includes links to videos)

CBC (English) - Electronic voting blamed for Quebec municipal election 'disaster' - October 25, 2006

In a new report on problems with Quebec's 2005 municipal election, chief electoral officer Marcel Blanchet targets the electronic voting system used to collect and count the votes.

The election was an expensive disaster marked by errors, which produced inaccurate numbers and unreliable results, the report said. And the new electronic system is to blame, it adds.

The full report (French only) is Élections municipales de novembre 2005 - Rapport d’évaluation des nouveaux mécanismes de votation (PDF, 3.2 MB). There are also Appendices (PDF: 3.4 MB / 120 pages).

There are more links at DGEQ News - Report on the Evaluation of New Methods of Voting.

Previously:
November 27, 2005 Montreal's electronic vote: what went wrong
November 13, 2005 articles about the Quebec election / articles concernant l'élection au Québec
November 13, 2005 Electronic counting fails Quebec
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