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.