Fractelle,

I have not been dodging your question(s). Just trying to work out how to answer them - there are so many layers to them.

You ask:

"Is your beef, therefore, of a "Yes, Minister" persuasion. Where bureaucracy rules government?"

Answer:

Yes, but worse. Without the humour of Sir Humphrey, Bernard, and Jim Hacker. If I could change one word in your question, it would be 'rules'. I would change that to 'forms', or 'effectively decides'.

You say:

"... I don't see a problem with electronic voting systems for disabled people."

Answer:

Neither do I, and neither, it would appear, does the AEC. Maximillion's post of Monday, 13 April 2009 at 9:21:49 AM broadly outlines exactly what the trial of eVACS® at the 2007 elections achieved. See this link to an AEC report on '[2007] Electronic Voting Trials for Electors who are Blind or have Low Vision': http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/e_voting/low_vision.htm

The thing is, the EM Committee have had presented to them a cost-per-electronically-assisted-vote-cast for each of the 850 electronically assisted votes cast (in only 29 polling places) in the trial, of $2,597. When you compare this to the average cost of unassisted paper ballots of $8.36 each, you sort of cannot blame the Committee for its recommendation to abandon the system. Far too simplistic an analysis, in my opinion.

You ask:

"... is this simply a 'thin end of the wedge' scenario that you are proposing?"

Answer:

Yes, but not only with respect to introducing fundamental change in the method of recording and counting votes, but also with respect to sidelining the statutorily appointed officers responsible for the front-line conduct of elections, the Divisional Returning Officers, with their historic independence, accountability, and underlying propriety in the discharge of that function.

You say:

"I do believe that voting will become electronic at some point in the future."

Answer:

Yes, and many, if not a majority, in the community, probably have that expectation, whether for good or ill.

And bureaucracy is counting on it!

Forrest

Thank you for your considered responses to my questions.

But no thanks for the shiver of fear that ran down my back on reading your replies.

Maybe Orwell was out by 100 years, 2084 is not that far away and we have the technology.

Fractelle,

Orwell was not out by 100 years with respect to Orwellian changes to electoral practice in Australia. He was right on target! The year 1984, at least in Australia, marked a profound intensification in the introduction of the sort of technological and legislative environment that permits the covert hijacking of democracy that you fear.

1984 marked the inception of the Australian Electoral Commission, and what can now be recognised as the first steps in the introduction of an unlawful form of centralized electronic electoral roll-keeping. The last printed, purchasable-by-the-public collection of Commonwealth Divisional electoral rolls properly capable of amendment and certification by the Divisional Returning Officers, the statutorily responsible persons, had been printed in 1982.

The (early) 1 December 1984 Federal elections saw the trial, in Northern Territory Divisions, of the optical mark reading of the certified lists of electors actually used to record vote claims. Ostensibly this optical mark reading scanning was being trialled as a means of automating the previously labour-intensive 'mark-back' of the electoral roll undertaken after each election to determine the electors who had appeared to have failed to vote, voting being compulsory. The justification for it was undoubtedly one of 'saving money'.

A concommitant requirement of the adoption of these optically scanable lists on which vote claims were recorded was one of centralized production. At the time of the trial only one or two Divisions were involved, so this corollary of adoption largely went unnoticed by the rest of Australia's front-line electoral officials, the DROs and their permanent staff. The 'reasoning' appears to have gone: "if we have to centrally produce these lists, we may as well go for the economies of centralized roll-keeping". The most significant function of the DROs was usurped by the Central Office of the AEC, but without the necessary change in the law having been enacted.

The other thing that automating the mark-back entailed was the breaking of the chain of custody of critical electoral accountancy documents, the marked lists of electors, upon which elections were conducted.

Scared more?

Fractelle,

We really need a more accurate term than 'bureaucracy' by which to label those who seemingly have overseen the introduction of the systems, many of them electronic and humanly unauditable (unless you are one of the programmers who designed and use such systems), that can be seen to threaten the hijack of democracy in Australia. I feel it fails to include some who are clearly not formally part of the public service, while at the same time unwarrantably smearing many serving public officials who have been blameless throughout in this electoral debacle.

Can I suggest the term 'metabureaucracy'? An unaccountable, only partially identifiable, elite. Transcending political party, and perhaps even national, loyalties and interests in influencing, if not determining, at one or two removes, the formation of Australian public policy.

Remember Sir Humphrey in one of the 'Yes, Minister' episodes? The issue conflicting Jim Hacker was one involving dioxins. The term 'metadioxins' was brought up, I think by Bernard, as a means of putting a spin on the issue for his Minister. Sir Humphrey, seeking definition, soliloquised: "'meta', from the Greek; above, or beyond, dioxin. Yes, metadioxins, Minister!"

I believe what we have here in both the historical and anticipated attempts to introduce centralized electronic roll management, electronic vote recording, and vote counting, into Australian electoral practice is indeed "above, or beyond, dioxin" in its existing, and potential future, harmful effects upon Australian democracy.

It is interesting to see TRTL having posted, on the 'Best uses for $43B?' thread, a link to an article in The Australian by Ziggy Switkowski, a former CEO of Telstra. One Zigmund Edward Switkowski is reported as having become the Chairman of Hermes Precisa Australia Pty Ltd in 1991. Hermes Precisa is the company that took over Endata Pty Ltd, the company that enabled the introduction of the optically scanable lists in the 1984 trials, and subsequently Australia-wide at the 1987 Federal elections. The Eastman Kodak Corporation was thought to have been at the bleeding edge of OCR in the 1980s. Switkowski was with Kodak 18 years from around 1982.

Metabureaucrat?

Getting back to the 'Blind fury', let's extend the simplistic cost analysis of the trial of eVACS® at the 2007 elections.

Had the 20,000 visually impaired electors that various disability groups had hoped would use the system trialled actually done so, the notional cost-per-vote would have only been $110, well down on the $2,597 per vote experienced at the 2007 Federal elections.

Had approximately five times as many pre-poll voting centres (one per electoral Division) been equipped with the eVACS® system (at, let's say, being generous, five times the $2.2M cost), and all of the estimated 300,000 visually impaired electors used those facilities during the pre-poll voting period, then the notional cost of an electronically assisted vote would have been around only $37. So being realistic, it could be expected that, if there was to become genuinely widespread interest among the visually impaired in electronic, as opposed to any other, assistance in voting, that a cost per vote of between $37 and $110 might be achieved.

At such lower costs per vote, had they been achieved, it is, in my opinion, much less likely that the EM Committee would have recommended, indeed could have justified, abandonment of the eVACS® system.

It is important to remind ourselves that the eVACS® system produced a printed ballot paper recording each such assisted elector's vote, those ballot papers being duly accounted for and counted by scrutiny as provided by existing law. Expressed differently, eVACS® fitted in with the EXISTING paper ballot system of recording and counting of votes.

By quoting the ridiculously high cost per vote of $2,597 achieved in the trial as justification for abandonment of eVACS®, but simultaneously mounting an emotional blackmail standover tactic purporting that such abandonment violates the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with a disability, is the metabureaucratic intention to effectively force the changeover of the WHOLE vote recording and counting process of ALL electors votes to become an electronic one as the only way to get the cost per vote down?

Forrest

Still a bit sleepy, must have second cuppa.

Metabureacrat - wonderful (I don't even remember that episode of Yes Minister but can imagine Sir Humphrey bristling with pleasure at the thought of being a metabureaucrat (he is not the type to purr; bureaucrats 'bristle' when wielding power).

As you have noted metabureaucrats are not exclusive to government. One of the plethora of reasons small business needs all the support it can get.

Your closing line:

"...emotional blackmail standover tactic purporting that such abandonment violates the United Nations convention on the rights of persons with a disability is the metabureaucratic intention to effectively force the changeover of the WHOLE vote recording and counting process of ALL electors votes to become an electronic one as the only way to get the cost per vote down?"

Yes, this is the way that 'human rights' are subverted.

So when and where is the revolution, comrade?