I have now read An Abbreviated American e-Voting Manifesto. (And how many people can say that?)

People should be sceptical about technological solutions to the problem of voting systems being subverted or simply going wrong. Assume that any technological proposal is wrong and then set about proving it. If you fail, there’s a nice surprise.

The Guardian held a vote among its Comment is free community to find the best blogs and the best comments. That was at Christmas 2007, I think, nine months after the quite-old-now manifesto above was published.

The vote had to be suspended. Not once, but twice. Clever people were deleting cookies and casting as many votes as they could be bothered to, thus subverting the voting system.

I wondered then if perhaps this was an example of the (alleged) truth that there is no redemption to be found in electronic voting.

But that isn’t why I read the manifesto. I read that because I wanted to see what the writers had to say about the secrecy of the ballot. We don’t want anyone to be able to work out who voted for whom. That is one of the tenets of our voting system. Well, it is in general elections, at least.

And do you know what the manifesto says about the secrecy of the ballot?

Nothing.

… The above 7 principles are simply technology-related extensions to, and in support of, existing rights of voters as participants in elections. The essence of those “voter rights” is that the entire voting process should be comprehensible, fair, honest, unbiased, and verifiable, with public access to results and audits.

“comprehensible, fair, honest, unbiased, and verifiable, with public access to results and audits” – yes, yes, yes, very good, but what about that other “voter right”, secrecy?

The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation are not alone in ignoring the secrecy of the ballot.

In 2006, Harriet Harman floated the notion of using the National Identity Register (NIR) to compile the electoral roll:

“You could download [the NIR] and at a stroke you could sort out your registration in parliamentary elections,” Ms Harman said on Tuesday. “But [since] some people are saying ‘you keep picking new reasons for having NIR’, I won’t say that publicly.”

She cited many benefits for this approach. Maintaining the secrecy of the ballot was not one of them. It was not mentioned.

Note how short a step it is from wanting a technology-based system which is “comprehensible, fair, honest, unbiased, and verifiable, with public access to results and audits” to wanting ID cards.

Note, that is, the unexpected strength of a system which relies on using a lead pencil to write an “X” on a piece of paper.

The Open Source Digital Voting Foundation are not alone in ignoring the secrecy of the ballot.

In 2006, Harriet Harman floated the notion of using the National Identity Register (NIR) to compile the electoral roll:

“You could download [the NIR] and at a stroke you could sort out your registration in parliamentary elections,” Ms Harman said on Tuesday. “But [since] some people are saying ‘you keep picking new reasons for having NIR’, I won’t say that publicly.”

She cited many benefits for this approach. Maintaining the secrecy of the ballot was not one of them. It was not mentioned.

Note how short a step it is from wanting a technology-based system which is “comprehensible, fair, honest, unbiased, and verifiable, with public access to results and audits” to wanting ID cards.

A quick geography/history lesson, courtesy of Wikipedia:

Hargeisa (Somali: Hargeysa, Arabic: هرجيسا‎) is a city in the northwestern Somaliland region of Somalia. It was the colonial capital of British Somaliland from 1941 to 1960 when it united with Italian Somaliland to form the Somali Republic, and also serves as the capital of the Somaliland region. Hargeisa is the largest city in the Somaliland region, and the second largest city in Somalia after Mogadishu, the nation’s capital.

The latest Private Eye (#1244, 4-17 September 2009, not available on the web) carries a ‘Letter from Hargeisa’:

Somaliland is the only place in the Horn of Africa that is democratic, stable and tolerant … our record of closely contested polls compares pretty well with our neighbours. Our friends faraway nevertheless thought that what we really needed was a state of the art biometric finger printing and facial recognition system to compile a voter’s roll …

Alas, this model of donor co-operation has somewhat underperformed. Presidential elections have been postponed four times now and are 18 months late, and now we have the prospect of civil war as our politicians cannot agree on a way forward.

Two questions:

1. Would the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation have done any better?

2. Was this a “half-baked and inadequate US ‘solution’ … exported in a characteristically aggressive manner”?

We don’t know the answer to 1., because the Foundation has not, as far I know, moved on from its manifesto 2½ years ago to deliver a product.

We do know the answer to 2., though, thanks to Private Eye. If anything, it seems to have been a half-baked and inadequate UN ‘solution’ … exported in a characteristically aggressive manner:

… an operation of such complexity – not to mention the $10m funding – could not possibly be trusted to us natives.

The brilliant new voting system was foisted on Somalia by Interpeace, formerly WSP International, previously a UN agency, who sub-contracted the work to a new company, Copenhagen Elections, which sub-contracted the work in turn to Creative Associates of Washington, a company made up of “ex-UN people, who have worked with Interpeace in the past”, according to Private Eye.

When the system didn’t work, who was blamed? No prizes for answering that one – the Somalis.

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To repeat, is the Open Source Digital Voting Foundation fit to work in this very grubby world? In a way, let’s hope not.

We may, through our ignorance, absolve Somalia for giving in to aggressive bullying. But there is no way we can absolve ourselves. If the UK gives in to it, that is our fault.

But look, I’m falling into the trap myself. We don’t normally on this forum accuse entire countries of aggressive bullying, and certainly not the sainted UN, and we shouldn’t start now.