Amsterdam rejects voting machines

26/07/2004 by Joe Figueiredo

Amsterdam city council has turned down a request by the Board of the Mayor and Aldermen (responsible for the city’s day-to-day running) for €400,000 for the installation of 480 automated voting machines in time for the next elections, in 2006.

According to the council, the machines - produced by Dutch manufacturers Nedap (hardware) and Nederlandse Groenendaal (software) - did not satisfy its basic requirements of transparency and verifiability.

One of the problems is that the machine proposed by the board contains confidential software, which remains the property of the supplier. This makes an independent and irrefutable investigation into the machine’s working and reliability impossible.

Moreover, the council maintains an "open-source" software policy for all new computer-based applications (voting machines apparently fall under this category).

Open-source software (such as the popular Linux operating system) refers to computer software that follows the popular model, where development is co-operative, the resulting product obtainable without charge, and the source code placed in the public domain.

Equally serious, the voting machine does not produce a ‘paper trail’ that verifies the identity of the voter and the way the vote was cast.

According to the privacy-lobby group, Bits of Freedom, the council was apparently swayed by Ireland’s objections earlier this year. The Irish government had considered using these voting machines in their European parliamentary elections in June, but ped the idea after an investigation revealed similar failings.

Amsterdam is the last local-council in the Netherlands to still deploy the time-honoured method of voting - pencil and paper - and is likely to continue for the moment, at least.