Back to the future…

This year’s European elections in the Netherlands are the first to use a particular futuristic piece of technology: the red pencil. This because the government last year was finally convinced voting computers just weren’t safe, after years of mounting doubts and campaigns against them. Because elections are organised on a municipal level, there has always been a patchwork of voting methods here, some councils like Amsterdam staying loyal to the red pencil long after most had implemented some form of electronic voting machine. Both main types of voting computer in use however at the last elections turned out to be easily hackable, which led to the first emergency return to the pencil.

Two years ago, the studygroup set up to making computer voting more safe recommended a two tier process: have the computer print out the ballot and use that as your physical vote. I’m not sure what happened to this recommendation, but obviously the current elections came to soon for it to be implemented. Personally, I don’t mind. The red pencil and paper ballot is about the safest method to use anyway: the most difficult to commit any subtle fraud with. Sure, ballot stuffing is still a possibility but as long as the system is reasonably honest, this will be much more noticable than altering computer records…