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Finnish supreme court orders an election re-run
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 2009 13:05:13 -0400
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 ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- Finnish supreme court orders an election re-run David Farber (Apr 10)