According to the Independent, the general angst about electronic voting is spreading in Ireland.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is dismissive of concerns and determined that an auditable paper trail will not be built into the system.

"We are not going to go back to pushing pieces of paper around the place," he said, accusing a critic of wanting "to keep old ways, old things, the old nonsensical past".

I guess he means that "old nonsensical past" where the election system was transparent, had impeccable integrity, it was simple to vote (mark the ballot paper and stick it in the box) and had a clear audit trail so that any anomalies could be reviewed openly. But it was, of course, terrible that it might take a few days to get the final results.

The new system will provide instant results (yahoo! - I use the word in its original sense prior to the Internet age) and a windfall for voting machine manufacturers all for 40m Euros(£26m). But no transparency, no simplicity, no audit trail, no confidence, no integrity...

Governments get five years if they win the election. Is democracy not worth a few days to make sure the results of the election are accurate? In the words of Milton Friedman in the Eldred amicus brief, this one is a complete "no brainer" for me. This ubiquitous Boys-Own blind faith of computing ignoramuses, like certain decision makers, in the ability of computers to automatically and magically make things better, regardless of the overall objective or the suitability of the tools (computers) to the task or [critically] the way in which those tools are deployed, drives me nuts on a daily basis in my own day job. That it is happening in so important a context of the integrity of our democracies is worrying in the extreme. Mr Ahern should not knock paper. It is still the best available technology for voting (imho).