Electronic voting machines eliminated in the Netherlands

(Dieser Artikel ist auch in deutscher Sprache verfügbar)

All Nedap/Groenendaal voting machines were decertified on 1 October 2007 by
District Court of Alkmaar in the Netherland, following the ‘Voting with
confidence’ advice issued on 27 September by Korthals Altes Committee
(created with the purpose to verify the validity of the systems), and the
announcement of the Secretary for the Interior that the ‘Regulations for
approval of voting machines 1997’ would be withdrawn.

The action is the result of an administrative law procedure started by ‘We
do not trust voting computers’ foundation in March 2007. The foundation had
issued a report in October 2006 that had examined the Nedap/Groenendaal ES3B
in operation in 8 out of the 9 poling stations in the Netherlands. The
report was showing that the systems were highly insecure, leaving room for
fraud at a large scale. The Korthals Altes Committee report came to confirm
the results of the foundation.

In their report, ‘We do not trust voting computers’ showed how the system
worked, what software they had created for it and gave details on how one
could get complete and undetected control of the election results if one had
access to the devices before the elections, even for a brief period. The
report also showed that radio emanations for the systems could be received
at a several meter distance giving the possibility to find out how people
voted.

The next elections in the Netherlands will use paper ballots and red pencil,
a method that provides transparency and that is now used in several
countries of Europe and in the US where a paper copy of each vote is
required. In Ireland, the use of the voting machines is stopped due to
serious questions regarding their security and the UK election council
intends stopping all electronic voting pilot projects that had been carried
on during the last years. In Germany doubts have arisen regarding their use
as well. In France, serious problems occurred during the pilot electronic
voting in spring election, the system having been considered a disaster. A
petition for the preservation of the paper voting was issued on that
occasion.

In the future, the next phase in The Netherlands after paper poling could be
the use of ‘vote printers’ and separate counting machines.

Dutch voting computers decertified
http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English

Study by “We do not trust voting computers” foundation (6.10.2006)
http://www.wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/images/9/91/Es3b-en.pdf

EDRI-gram: E-voting in France – After the First Round of Presidential
Elections (25.04.2007)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.8/e-voting-france

EDRI-gram: European e-voting machines cracked by Dutch group (11.10.2006)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number4.19/e-voting