E-vote of no confidence
Your discussion of e-voting (Click here for your candidate, Online, June 7) concentrates primarily on technical issues of security and the obvious issues of the digital divide. You ignore a critical aspect of manual counting, namely its openness and observability.
In the current system, candidates and agents can make spot visits to the polling stations, inspect the ballot boxes for tampering, watch the counting agents sort and count the papers and check whether a voting slip is in the right pile or should be counted as spoilt. They can demand a recount if they are not satisfied.
Who is going to check that the software really is doing what it says it is doing? Just because the box says "approved by KPMG" (or Microsoft, or The Ministry of Truth) will this be good enough to command the trust of all candidates and electors?
We might trust organisations of which we are voluntary members to handle e-voting fairly. We should be far more careful before allowing the state to use e-voting technologies that could so easily be centrally manipulated.
Andy Dearden,
School of Computing and Management Sciences, Sheffield Hallam University
The three main technical problems you mention (security, scaleability and synergy) could be overcome and you include Tony Benn's comments on the desirability of deliberation in politics, but there is a further difficulty to e-voting.
While comments about the digital divide are well known, this is likely to become less of a problem with the introduction of digital television, assuming access to the world wide web and not simply an intranet such as Open.
One major issue remains. Any vote would offer a massive revenue boost to private companies. These companies will either be the ISPs, such as Sky/AOL, or to those who own the pipes, for example BT/NTL. That the exercise of one's democratic right should deliver profits into the hands of shareholders is fundamentally wrong.
Online voting offers the potential to reduce the friction in the voting process and thereby increase turnout. But this must be organised within the public sphere and not that of private profit. Perhaps a public service ISP could overcome these problems.
Jamie Cowling
Media & Communications Department, London School of Economics
Things that jumped off the page, in your articles about electronic elections...
Dr Griffiths (LibDem) says, of electronic campaigning, "You could send out a thousand emails as easily as a single letter". Oh joy. Party political spam. Just what the net needs.
Meanwhile, in the article about the email Labour NEC elections, we see that the "who voted" and "how" databases are separate, so that "names and votes cannot be linked". But, "if you have voted more than once, all your votes will be spoilt". How do they do that, then?
Paul Smee
www.cse.bris.ac.uk/~ccpes
Applying ADSL
Richard Cutting's letter (Online, June 7) regarding a lack of "killer applications" is symptomatic of the ignorance regarding the possibilities of broadband ADSL.
ADSL itself is the killer application. The point is that modern PCs can multi-task. ADSL does not have a one stop shop killer app designed for it (thank god), but it is capable of handling the requests of several bandwidth hungry apps in a way that puts ISDN, let alone 56k, to shame.
For example, if a father wants to download an update for his Office software, while his wife chats on the phone, without disrupting his son's burning desire to wage war with his clan in the game Tribes 2, he can do so without booting the other two family members off the line.
People's technophobia, techno-ignorance and scepticism regarding new high bandwidth necessity in the communication age comes down to one thing - a lack of imagination. Instead of information being spoonfed to the public at large through a limited number of one way publications, the internet provides users with the opportunity to interact and become involved in the information that burns through the superhighway. Or at least it could burn through the superhighway if the UK had a good enough techno infrastructure, which it does not.
Does Richard Cutting work for BT perhaps?
Christopher Ashley
sirch@zensearch.net
Smarter Apple
Jack Schofield makes a big deal of "smart tags" in Microsoft's recently launched Office XP (Online, June 7), rightly, as it is neat technology.
I therefore salute Apple for introducing it as Apple Data Detectors (ADD) in 1997. Typical of Apple, ADD runs with or complements almost any software that runs on a Mac, not restricting its use to Apple's (or Claris's) own software. Can the same be said of "smart tags"? The simple SDK/syntax for ADD puts the technology within reach of anyone who can put together a basic AppleScript, no need for developers and downloads here, just roll your own.
However, also typical of Apple, it never really told anyone about it!
Clive Bruton
clive.bruton@creativesconnect.com
Green debate
One small but important addition to Ruth Rosselson's welcome piece on ethical shopping (Online, June 7): a place where people can share views and information on what works and what doesn't in the world of alternative consumerism. Each section of the GreenChoices website has a space for people to share their experiences and to suggest links to other green products - or just warn others against fake green claims.
Recent debates range from shaving oil to menstrual caps, the relative impact of diesel and petrol, or how to avoid drowning the worms in your compost bin. And if anyone out there can meet an annual order of 500 recycled A4 picture frames for an environmental law firm, just look in the Office section.
John Hilary,
Director, GreenChoices
