Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Fair elections

I'm working on chapter 7 of my book which deals with the importance of understanding the limitations of technology as a tool, using two main stories, the development of radar technology before World War II and electronic voting.

I'm mostly interested in the situation in Ireland and the UK but I just came across a lovely evoting story, told by Bev Harris at BlackBoxVoting, eminating from the 2002 Governship election in Nebraska. The law in Nebraska states that the candidates are entitled to watch the count when the votes have been cast. One of the candidates, eager to watch democracy in action, was shown an optical scanning machine and then a computer in a private room with a blank screen.

Most of the high impact e-voting stories I'm familiar with come from the US so it would be good to hear from folks on the more colourful stories on this side of the pond.

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