The New South Wales iVote digital voting system isn’t covering itself in glory. The iVote system reportedly experienced an issue on election day meaning that some ballots were cast incorrectly.
Image: Alpha
iVote is a system that allowed those voting in New South Wales to submit an absentee vote online for both the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. An issue uncovered in the Legislative Council digital ballots however means that some people were unable to were unable to vote above the line for their preferred party. Namely, the Outdoor Recreation Party and Animal Justice Party were affected.
The ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, writes that 19,000 votes were cast on the system before the issues were fixed and adds that the count so far shows both parties could be missing votes in the Legislative Council election.
Green points out that there’s a slim chance that this issue could send NSW back to the polls.
The error won’t see the result of the election change that much: right now it’s a fight between parties which aren’t in contention for the seat, but it’s yet another problem with the iVote system.
The news about the counting flaw comes weeks after the system was revealed to have a massive security hole. The hole — which was patched before the election — found that votes which were thought to be secure and encrypted were in fact vulnerable and could have been changed by hackers.
Read Antony Green’s full post on the ABC for more. It’s a fascinating post. [ABC]