Court nullifies e-voting election result

09 March 2005   The Daily Yomiuri

Yomiuri Shimbun

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.

Wednesday's ruling overturned an earlier decision by the Gifu prefectural election administration committee to dismiss a complaint filed by voters demanding nullification of the election.

The suit was filed by 15 citizens, including a failed candidate.

Presiding Judge Kunio Aoyama said it was inappropriate to allow people to vote when their ballot could not be correctly registered due to a technical problem. He added there was possibility the result may have been affected by the malfunction.

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.

As a result, the number of votes cast was registered as greater than the actual number of people who cast a vote. In another instance, some voters gave up trying to cast a vote and others voted twice.

Responding to the complaint by the citizens, the prefectural election administration committee ruled that due to the malfunction, there were 24 votes that were suspected of affecting the election result. Because the gap between the candidate who was elected last and next candidate was 35 votes, the committee decided the election was valid.

However, Wednesday's ruling concluded after reexamination of the ballots that the number of votes that could have affected the election result was 27. The judge said, "It's highly likely that many voters gave up trying to vote because of the malfunction," adding that there could have been a different result if those people voted.

The prefectural election administration committee said in its statement, "We regard this ruling overturning our earlier decision with regret. We'll decide what to do after closely studying the ruling."

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.

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