"Federal Constitutional Court stops usage of voting computers
Until further notice, German voters will vote with pen and paper: The Constitutional court has declared the voting machines used e.g. in the last Federal election illegal. The current technology had defects and was hard to control[, the court said].
Karlsruhe. - The approx. 1800 devices with which around 2 mio. voters have voted in the Bundestag election of 2005 contradict the principle of public election [The Principle that votes are counted in public., note of translator], it said in the verdict delivered on Tuesday.
However, as there were no hints of errors, the election itself remains valid, the court in Karlsruhe decided. It can hence be expected that the elections this year will be carried out with paper and a pen.
With the decision on Tuesday, two complains were mostly successful. The appeal complained about several flaws in the machines which, according to the plaintiffs, violate secret voting and democratic control over the couting.
The Vice president of the Federal Constitutional Court, Andreas VoÃYkuhle, stressed that e-voting isn't completely banned now. However, the currently used machines had flaws. "The tenor of the decision could lead to the conclusion that the court was hostile towards technology and misconceived the challenges and possibilities of the digital age.", VoÃYkuhle said. But this was not true. The use of voting machines would indeed be possible. "Nor has the court banned possibilities of internet voting."
Approx. 2 mio. voters haven't voted with a pen and a ballot in the 2005 election, but instead with a voting machine.
The electronic voting devices were used in 39 of the 299 voting districts all over the country, precisely in the states of Brandenburg, Hesse, Nordrhine-Westphalia, Rhineland-Pfalz and Saxony-Anhalt.
The Nedap voting machines common in Germany were used for the first time during the 1999 EP election and recently in a municipal election in Brandenburg in September 2008. The decision of the Federal Constitutional Court was aimed at the computers Nedap ESD1 and ESD2.
The plaintiffs were the physician Ulrich Wiesner and his father Joachim Wiesner, a retired policital scientist. In the name of the plaintiffs, Prof. Wolfgang LÃwer from Bonn critizised in the hearing in October that the voters would have to have "blind faith" towards the electronic ballots. "We are concerned about a vacuum of control after the act of voting." This endangered the principle of a public election. In a traditional ballot election, the citizens can be present during the counting of the ballots. Justice Rudolf Mellinghoff, who was the primary responsible judge in the case, then [in October] asked about the possibility to make the computer election more traceable through a printed ballot.
Experts say that modifications of the software could generally be discovered afterwards, but hardware modifications - i.e. on the actual device - were hard to discover, JÃrn Müller-Quade from the European Institute for System Security said. Such manipulations were demonstrated by the Chaos Computer Club.
Voting machines have been used in several countries for years. Especially in the USA, they are very common despite known flaws in elections. Especially punchcards are wide spread over there and played a major role in the problems of the Presidential election of 2000 in Florida."