Electoral Council wants alternative to CD-ROM and counting ballots electronically – IT Pro – News

The Dutch Electoral Council will look into whether or not the software program utilized in elections will now not must be despatched by way of a CD-ROM sooner or later. That’s now occurring with the check software program, however many computer systems now not have CD-ROM trays.

That writes the Electoral Council in an analysis of the provincial and water board elections in March. The election outcomes had been dependable, in keeping with the election authority, however ‘the group of the election course of is underneath nice stress’. The explanations for this lay with the poll papers and with the software program used after the elections so as to add up the outcomes.

In keeping with the Electoral Council, one of many issues lies with the dimensions of the poll papers. The Electoral Council recommends making smaller poll papers sooner or later. That is primarily as a result of it’s extra handy to make use of, however the Electoral Council additionally notes {that a} smaller poll paper will be counted electronically. “We urgently advise the Minister of the Inside to hurry up the checks and experiments with digital counting along with the experiments with a smaller poll paper,” the Electoral Council writes. In the intervening time such experiments don’t but exist; all votes are nonetheless solid by hand by polling station members.

A second potential vulnerability within the voting course of nonetheless lies with the software program used to depend the outcomes. That is OSV-2020, the Supporting Software program Elections. Though voting and counting within the Netherlands is completed with paper and pencil, the outcomes per polling station are recorded in a software program program after counting. These outcomes are printed out and brought to a municipal polling station, the place all outcomes from particular person polling stations are additionally introduced collectively in one other a part of the software program. An official report can be issued with the overall outcomes and the distribution of seats at municipality degree. Tweakers wrote in 2021 a background article on how the software program works. In recent times, work has been accomplished on an alternate, the Digital Instrument for Elections, which we additionally wrote a background about ithowever its improvement has now been discontinued.

OSV-2020 was used within the final elections. That went properly, however the Electoral Council sees many factors for enchancment. One was that the software program was mailed to the polling stations on a CD-ROM. That is accomplished for safety causes. Nevertheless, the Electoral Council notes that polling stations usually have too little time to check using the software program. There’s additionally one thing else concerned, says the Electoral Council: “As well as, not each pc is appropriate for CD-ROMs today.”

The software program couldn’t be delivered earlier as a result of it needed to be arrange on ultimate lists of candidates. The Electoral Council says it’s ‘getting ready for an alternate distribution technique’ that must be sooner, however it’s not identified what that must be. OSV-2020 can’t be up to date over-the-air because the software program is designed to not work if the PC has an web connection open.