2009-03-03

German High Court Declares Election Machines Unconstitutional

Wow, hats off to the German Constitutional High Court - they declared today that the use of the election machines used in the previous parliamentary election was unconstitutional.

They found that it was impossible for average citizens to detect errors or manipulations in the machines that were used in the 2005 elections. This violated the condition for elections to be transparent. They also found that a speedy reporting of the results - one of the main reasons for using the expensive and complicated machines - was not demanded by the constitution.

Looks like all the NEDAP voting machines that Germany purchased cheap from Holland when they banned the machines were kind of a bad investment. Of course, notes the Chaos Computer Club, they can perhaps be sold as chess computers. A Dutch programmer had reprogrammed them to play chess, demonstrating them to be universal computers, not specialized voting systems.

at 23:02

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

>German High Court Declares Election Machines Unconstitutional

no, they didn't, in this/such a general sense. They only stated "So Nicht!" but not "Ueberhaupt Nicht!" ...Sie fanden ein Haar in der Suppe. Wir dagegen wollen keine Suppe!

>they declared the use of the election machines used in the previous parliamentary election was unconstitutional.

in a very limited way and using very odd words and phrasing, they avoided outlawing the use of computers past or future, they only found a way to gripe about "Nachvollziehbarkeit" -- a Konzept that is rather meaningless to voters (who, after the fact of voting, have never had a way of "nachzuvollziehen" <---also irgend etwas nachzupruefen. Oder wie sollte das ablaufen (ob mit oder ohne Papier und Bleistift)?

Mar 6, 2009, 4:17:00 AM
brainerror said...

You can usually verify the result by recounting the sheets, and faking some of those is rather risky. However, there's no way to recount the machines input. There's just what the machine says there is/was, no proof.

But there's a solution for future elections: The machines could print out a re-readable result. Counting could then be done by machines (=quick, cheap) but also by humans (if in doubt about the result). Personally, I would accept such a solution.

Mar 9, 2009, 9:48:00 AM

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