Moves to introduce online voting in Australian elections has been dealt a “massive blow by the disastrous stuff-up” on Census night, with some commentators saying it is dead in the water. Software experts and e-voting supporters have lashed out at the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ “incompetence” and say it will cruel future government mass internet projects like online voting. “In a single fell swoop the appalling incompetence of ABS statisticians has dealt an absolute blow … to the future of online voting,” David Glance told news.com.au. Dr Glance, who is director of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Software Practice, said the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), had “not only damaged their own reputation and their ability to convince anyone to take seriously any of their technical claims. “They have brought into question the ability of any government agency to be able to run technology projects of this scale. “This has tipped back running elections online into the risks outweighing the benefits.” David Crowe, political correspondent for The Australian, went further, “Online voting, always a risky prospect, is certainly dead after this affair”.
While online voting had its supporters in Federal Parliament, including the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Crowe said that the “denial of service” (DDOS) attack which the ABS claimed had breached the site was impossible to prevent. “If the privacy worries were not enough, the prospect of a DDOS attack on a Federal Election makes online voting a reckless idea at this point,” he said in The Australian.
Phillip Zada of the University of New England’s mobile e-voting research project agreed that the Census fail was a serious setback for convincing the Australian public to vote online. “Just when people were warming to the idea because of the lengthy time it took to count the votes in the Federal Election, it has taken a step back,” he said. “One of the key issues is trust and this is going to hit at the bottom line of trust of online voting, fears that anything online is susceptible to this kind of malicious act.
Full Article: Census hacked: Australian online voting ‘dead in the water’.