Opposition to Electronic Voting System Grows in France
from the NY Times
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: April 4, 2007
PARIS, April 3 — For France’s Socialists, among others, the coming presidential election could descend into a nightmare like last fall’s in Florida.
This is the first presidential election in France to use paperless computer voting. As many as 1.5 million of the 44.5 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots electronically in more than 80 municipalities around the country.
But with election day less than three weeks away, opposition to the electronic voting machines has grown, in part because a small percentage of them are made by the same American company whose machines were involved in a bitterly disputed Congressional election in Florida last November.
“We have doubts about the reliability of these machines,” Gilles Savary, a spokesman for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, said in an interview. “I don’t want to lecture America. But we don’t want France to fall into the same Kafkaesque balloting as happened in the United States.”
Last week, the Socialist Party called for a moratorium on using the machines until their reliability could be determined. The party also wants a debate on the issue in Parliament.
“The fear shown by numerous voters faced with a system they don’t know runs the risk of keeping them away from the polls,” the Socialist Party said in a communiqué on Friday, adding that the risks of fraud and of “massive and undetectable errors” are very real.
for the full article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/europe/04france.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fFrance&oref=slogin
By ELAINE SCIOLINO
Published: April 4, 2007
PARIS, April 3 — For France’s Socialists, among others, the coming presidential election could descend into a nightmare like last fall’s in Florida.
This is the first presidential election in France to use paperless computer voting. As many as 1.5 million of the 44.5 million registered voters are expected to cast their ballots electronically in more than 80 municipalities around the country.
But with election day less than three weeks away, opposition to the electronic voting machines has grown, in part because a small percentage of them are made by the same American company whose machines were involved in a bitterly disputed Congressional election in Florida last November.
“We have doubts about the reliability of these machines,” Gilles Savary, a spokesman for Ségolène Royal, the Socialist Party candidate, said in an interview. “I don’t want to lecture America. But we don’t want France to fall into the same Kafkaesque balloting as happened in the United States.”
Last week, the Socialist Party called for a moratorium on using the machines until their reliability could be determined. The party also wants a debate on the issue in Parliament.
“The fear shown by numerous voters faced with a system they don’t know runs the risk of keeping them away from the polls,” the Socialist Party said in a communiqué on Friday, adding that the risks of fraud and of “massive and undetectable errors” are very real.
for the full article, go to: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/04/world/europe/04france.html?_r=1&n=Top%2fNews%2fWorld%2fCountries%20and%20Territories%2fFrance&oref=slogin
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-Brony