Dutch municipalities will be allowed to use computers to count the votes cast in the 15 March elections, but only if those are not connected to the Internet, the Dutch government said on Wednesday. Officials were also banned from using USB-sticks or other devices to bring the results from municipalities to the headquarters of the 20 electoral districts, The measures are part of Plasterk’s attempt to rule out hacking, especially from Russia, and follows a report by Dutch broadcaster RTL at the end of January. RTL said the software that was used to register the votes was vulnerable to hacking because it did not contain any security requirements for computers it was used on. Plasterk then decided that the registering of votes should be done by hand. Registering votes was the only part of the electoral process that was theoretically open to hacking.
The Dutch government said it does not have concrete evidence hacking attempts have been made in recent years. However, after the reports of Russian influence in the US elections, the possibility is on everyone’s minds.
Voting itself is done on paper in pencil and the contents of the ballot boxes are counted by hand.
Full Article: Dutch will count votes on offline PCs to prevent hacking.