Finnish supreme court orders an election re-run

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Jari Arkko <jari.arkko () piuha net>
Date: April 10, 2009 10:56:10 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Finnish supreme court orders an election re-run

Dave,

For IP, if deemed worthy:

I thought I'd report on some good news for a change. In late 2008,  
municipal elections in Finland were run with electronic voting  
machines in a number of cities, with the intent of using the system  
for country wide elections next time. After the elections it turned  
out that the machines had mysteriously lost 2% of the votes. This may  
not sound much, but typical error rates in Finnish elections are in  
the 0.2%-0.5% range, so this might have been a ten fold increase. The  
authorities were quick to label the problem with the inability of the  
voters to use computers. However, us local voters collected evidence  
of more serious issues, such as machines hanging up at the critical  
moment, user interface design errors where only one input among two  
possible ones was handled in the software, and incorrect instructions.  
And appealed the election results.

A court battle and internal investigations in the ministry of justice  
followed. The final results was given out yesterday by the Supreme  
Administrative Court (SAC). Here's what happened:

- The court orders the elections to be re-run

- The internal investigation revealed serious issues, such as ignoring  
found bugs

- The minister of justice, Tuija Brax, has announced the termination  
of the trial. She also says that if electronic voting is used in the  
future, it has to be made more reliable even for a trial, employ a  
verifiable paper trail, and consider the use of open source software.

More information here:

http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Supreme+Administrative+court+orders+new+municipal+elections+for+Vihti+Karkkila+and+Kauniainen/1135245067013
http://www.effi.org/blog/2009-04-09-EVoting-Supreme-Admin-Court.html
http://www.turre.com/2009/04/e-voting-appeal-won/
http://translate.google.fi/translate?prev=hp&hl=fi&js=n&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.effi.org%2Fjulkaisut%2Ftiedotteet%2Flehdistotiedote-2009-04-09.html&sl=fi&tl=en

Jari Arkko





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