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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (28 November) . . Page.. 3259 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

The outline that I have given is based on a briefing by the Electoral Commissioner. It should be noted, though, that under this bill it is the commissioner who will determine whether electronic voting and counting is to be introduced for the 2001 election. The commissioner proposes to have a reference group on which MLAs would be represented and says that he would not proceed if he did not have the group's approval. There is, however, no formal obligation for him to do so.

Mr Speaker, the march to an electronic system may be inevitable and we should not be frightened of it. Nevertheless, this bill raises some issues to note. The first is the handing over of the decision on introduction of the system to the Electoral Commissioner. On this aspect, we will be relying on the commissioner and his professional capacity.

Security is a further major issue. Given the experience of the Pentagon and other major computer system users that have received some notoriety in news reports, can we expect the ballot data to be secure from unauthorised access or manipulation? In the event of disputes, how can we be assured that data has not been tampered with deliberately or accidentally? How will the system maintain a record of votes cast without intruding on the privacy of the individual vote? How can people be sure that the computer program that captures and counts the votes is doing its job properly?

To address this, I am advised that it would be best if the software for the entire electronic voting system were open source. "Open source" means the underlying code from which a program is written is published. The program and its operating system must be very reliable and secure. For instance, will the software avoid glitches? What will happen if the system crashes just as someone votes? How can that voter be sure that his or her vote has been recorded?

There will be many other issues to be considered in developing this proposal. Some will be the layout of the ballot on the screen, access to the screen for people with disabilities and of different size, and the privacy of the polling booths.

There are only 11 months until the next election. Implementing a system to allow for the electronic casting and tallying of votes in the time available may be being optimistic. Software engineering projects are notorious for going over time, over budget, and failing to meet specifications. The Electoral Commissioner and his reference group will have a large task before them.

Mr Speaker, in acknowledging each of these issues that do need to be addressed in the time available to implement this proposal before the next election, the Labor Party will support the bill, but that support is subject to one substantial and important proviso. This bill is not about voting using the Internet. It is about electronic voting and clause 7 of the bill, proposed new section 120(2), restricts electronic voting to the commissioner making arrangements at a polling place for electors to use an electronic ballot paper-arrangements only at a polling place.

Mr Speaker, the bill is not about Internet voting and it needs to be made clear that the bill is not about Internet voting. We may go to the Internet eventually, but not until a great many questions have been addressed and resolved.

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