In Most of Europe, Electronic Voting Loses Out to Paper Ballots

Pilot Programs and Tests Are Run, but Reliability And Security Are Concerns

BRUSSELS -- Some 2,500 years after the Greeks kicked off democracy by dumping pieces of pottery into urns, Europe can't bring itself to fully embrace another invention, electronic voting.

When 350 million European Union citizens voted for the European Union Parliament on June 13, only Belgium and the Netherlands relied on computer-based systems. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and a dozen other countries ran pilot programs, and some even tested voting by e-mail and text message. But overall, citizens and governments preferred to choose their leaders with paper votes counted by hand.

They remain worried about the security and reliability of electronic voting. A &euro;57 million ($69.8 million) plan in Ireland was scrapped in April, only two months before the election, because of security concerns. In London, a new electronic-counting device drew fire after computers spit out hundreds of ballots with rumpled bar codes. The EU Commission, usually a proponent of new technology, refuses to endorse e-voting.

In an e-mail response, Commissioner Erkki Liikanen argues instead that "technical" problems and "social acceptability" issues make it unlikely that e-voting will ever be used by all Europeans.

Activists and politicians in Europe have developed well-honed arguments for and against e-voting. Supporters tout the virtues of instant democracy. "In Ireland, it takes three days to count the paper ballots of some constituencies," says David Walsh, manager of that country's electronic-voting program. "Why wouldn't you want votes counted right away?"

No Paper Trail

But electronic voting leaves no paper trail and is vulnerable to hacking and technological glitches, say detractors. "Nothing is as safe as a paper ballot," argues Darren Johnson, who was the Green party's unsuccessful mayoral candidate in London in June. He terms an "absolute scandal" the rejection this year in London of several hundred ballots with torn or rumpled bar codes.

While there have been no reported problems with hackers, computer defects have caused embarrassing errors.

For a few hours in 2003, on national election day, Maria Vindevoghel thought she had started a Belgian revolution. Then she found out that a binary-code malfunction caused by a cosmic ray had given her Communist Party 4,096 extra votes in Schaerbeek, a Brussels precinct. "It was one of the first places to vote, so I thought we had something big going," says the 46-year-old union activist.

That story, says Jason Kitcat, shows why "paper is still the best system." For Mr. Kitcat, a political scientist at the University of Sussex in the U.K., "voters need to be sure that if they make a cross in the right box, their vote will be counted."

But the Dutch and Belgian citizens who pick politicians off a screen aren't complaining, despite the odd computer mistake that threatens to put communists in power.

Belgium implemented its first electronic-voting system in 1994. In the last election, 44% of the population voted electronically, mostly in cities. Small towns continue to use paper. Voters get a card on their way into the booth. They slot the card into a computer, punch in their vote on a touch screen, then get the card back. On their way out, they insert the card into another computer that counts the votes.

Dutch Are Used to It

On June 13, Michel Staszewski, a high-school history teacher who is opposed to electronic voting, paraded along a voting line in a Brussels school. "This system is like Big Brother," he pleaded. "You never find out if your vote is ever counted." He handed out pamphlets and requested signatures on a petition. But the citizens he was courting didn't pay much attention. "E-voting is not less trustworthy than somebody counting by hand," said Jean-Michel Depasse, a 31-year-old marketing manager.

The Dutch have been voting on computers since the 1970s, and the country lacks an anti-electronic-voting movement. "It doesn't bother anybody because we're used to it," says Judich Sleider, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of the Interior.

The next step for the Dutch is voting over the Internet. Some 7,000 volunteers voted online in a pilot project in June. Their vote was protected by password, but there are still too many concerns about fraud to implement a full system, says Ms. Sleider.

In Ireland, the government wants to copy the Dutch system. Last year, it bought &euro;57 million of the same computers -- 7,000 machines -- used in the Netherlands, made by a Dutch company called Nedap . Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern wanted to make electronic voting a symbol of his country's modernization. Everything was in place for the June elections, but an independent commission ruled in April that the computers hadn't been properly tested for hacker attacks or accidents.

In its final report, the commission expressed doubts about the "accuracy and secrecy of the system." In a phone poll by a Dublin newspaper, only 61% of Irish said they supported e-voting. But the government still plans to use e-voting in the 2006 general elections and has asked the commission for another evaluation. "It will take time, but it will happen," says Mr. Walsh, the project's manager. He argues that even if e-voting systems make mistakes, they're at least as reliable as paper-based ballots. "Those aren't perfect either," he says.

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