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  SILICON CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Production Manager Greg Swain, B.Sc. (Hons.) Technical Editor John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Ross Tester Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc Nicholas Vinen Photography Ross Tester Reader Services Ann Morris Advertising Enquiries Glyn Smith Phone (02) 9939 3295 Mobile 0431 792 293 glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Brendan Akhurst Rodney Champness, VK3UG Kevin Poulter Stan Swan Dave Thompson SILICON CHIP is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 003 205 490. ABN 49 003 205 490. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Printing: Hannanprint, Noble Park, Victoria. Distribution: Network Distribution Company. Subscription rates: $105.00 per year in Australia. For overseas rates, see our website or the subscriptions page in this issue. Editorial office: Unit 1, 234 Harbord Rd, Brookvale, NSW 2100. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9939 3295. Fax (02) 9939 2648. E-mail: silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au ISSN 1030-2662 Recommended and maximum price only. 2  Silicon Chip Publisher’s Letter Electronic voting is not needed As you read this, the Australian federal election will have been resolved and the new government will be in power. However, it is quite possible that some Senate seats will still be in doubt due to the extremely complex ballot for the upper house. The long delay in obtaining the Senate result has prompted some commentators to advocate the introduction of electronic voting as a solution to this and other aspects of our overly complex electoral system. One of those proponents has been Malcolm Turnbull who will probably be the Minister for Communications in the new government. He has specifically advocated electronic voting because it would reduce informal votes and also largely prevent electoral fraud whereby people vote using other names or simply do it in many different booths. He is particularly concerned about the level of informal voting which runs at about 6% of the total vote, or about 670,000 in total. Since I have been involved as a scrutineer at the last two elections in New South Wales, I would caution against the introduction of electronic voting simply to fix these two problems. In the booth where I recently scrutineered, the level of informal voting was 6.5% but a good proportion of those votes were rejected simply because people had only filled in one or two of the boxes. Those people had clearly indicated which person they wanted to vote for. Their votes would have been valid if optional preferential voting was allowed, as it is in some state government elections. So in my experience, a majority of informal votes could be made formal by a simple change to the electoral laws. Optional preferential voting should be allowed in any case because most voters do not understand how preferential voting works and even if they do, they would not and could not know the labyrinthine ramifications of how the allocation of their preferences will finally be “exhausted”, particularly in the Senate elections. If people cannot understand the voting system then it clearly needs fixing. And of course, preferential voting forces you to “prefer” candidates you may intensely dislike. As to the question of electoral fraud, most of this could be fixed by simply asking people for identification before they are allowed to vote. Most people would regard this as a simple and reasonable requirement. So both of the above problems can be addressed by simple legislation rather than the introduction of electronic voting. In any case, it seems likely any such voting would not be via the internet but would still require people to attend polling booths, as they do now. Partly this would be because many people are not computer-literate or they may disabled or otherwise unable to do electronic voting without assistance. But even if electronic voting was to be introduced at polling booths, I still have doubts whether it would be a big advance and whether it could be done at reasonable cost. On the latter point, one only has to look at the Federal Government’s costly and yet-to-be introduced e-health system to know that big system changes based on computers can be fraught with problems. Nor would electronic voting necessarily accelerate the count in elections. To give the Australian Electoral Commission its due, the ultimate result in most seats in the House of Representatives in the recent election was pretty much known within a few hours after the close of polling. If we had optional preferential voting and practical limitations on the numbers of crackpots who can nominate for the Senate, the counting process could be done even more quickly. Overall, we should not look to technology to solve what are really societal problems. Besides which, I would rather use a pencil to fill in a few boxes rather than interact with some annoying computer program in order to vote. Leo Simpson siliconchip.com.au