Hi,
There was an opinion piece on electronic voting in Tuesday's Irish Times by Annrai O'Toole and Brendan Tangney. The former is a founder of IONA and the latter a member of faculty in TCD. Both computing experts by all accounts.
In general, their piece is as uninformed as the debate they decry. The ICTE is doing good work analysing the article and preparing a rebuttal. Whether the Irish Times will provide a right to reply is a different thing.
However, my concern is that in the middle of the piece, they propose that the government should fund an open source project to replace the counting software.[1] This is a good idea, but what I am afraid of is that the idea will be associated in many minds with a pair of commentators who were subsequently denounced, properly, by a well-informed group of people.
I don't know what will happen to the notion of such a project after that, but from the start, this may be another reason to avoid the term "open source" and to stick with "Free Software" when talking to people who aren't familiar with either about electronic voting.
2c spent.
Éibhear
[1] In the same paragraph they assert that they could implement the whole of the counting process in MS Excel. Sheeesh!