Indiana: Concerns mount over electronic voting; some call for return to paper ballot | Journal and Courier

Ten years ago, West Lafayette artist Sandy Daniel walked into the White Horse Christian Center to vote in the primary election and had an unsettling encounter with what was supposed to be a major advance in voting technology — the touch-screen ballot. After choosing her favored candidates, a list that included her husband and Republican circuit court judge candidate Don Daniel, she touched the screen to finalize her choices and an “error” message appeared. Not knowing whether her vote counted or not, she pressed election officials for an explanation. An hour later, they tried to reassure her, saying the number of votes tallied at the poll matched the number of people who had signed in to vote and that her vote had been counted. A service technician later attributed the error to an unknown “hardware problem.” Thinking back to the incident, Daniels says she’s put it all behind her. Her husband went on to win the primary and general election and continues to hold the judicial post.

Indiana: Concerns mount over electronic voting; some call for return to paper ballot | Journal and Courier | jconline.com

Ten years ago, West Lafayette artist Sandy Daniel walked into the White Horse Christian Center to vote in the primary election and had an unsettling encounter with what was supposed to be a major advance in voting technology — the touch-screen ballot. After choosing her favored candidates, a list that included her husband and Republican circuit court judge candidate Don Daniel, she touched the screen to finalize her choices and an “error” message appeared. Not knowing whether her vote counted or not, she pressed election officials for an explanation. An hour later, they tried to reassure her, saying the number of votes tallied at the poll matched the number of people who had signed in to vote and that her vote had been counted. A service technician later attributed the error to an unknown “hardware problem.” Thinking back to the incident, Daniels says she’s put it all behind her. Her husband went on to win the primary and general election and continues to hold the judicial post.

National: New Election System Promises to Help Catch Voting-Machine Problems | Wired

When voting system activists in the U.S. managed to get many paperless electronic voting machines replaced a few years ago with optical-scan machines that use paper ballots, some believed elections would become more transparent and verifiable. But a spate of problems with optical-scan machines used in elections across the country have shown that the systems are just as much at risk of dropping ballots and votes as touchscreen voting machines, either due to intentional manipulation or unintentional human error. A new election system promises to resolve that issue by giving election officials the ability to independently and swiftly audit the performance of their optical-scan machines. Called Clear Ballot, the system is patterned in part after an auditing system that was used in California in 2008. It uses high-speed commercial scanners made by Fujitsu, as well as software developed by the Clear Ballot team, which includes a former developer who worked under Ray Ozzie to create Lotus Notes.

Canada: Halifax council candidate says electronic voting underway too soon | Metro News

Halifax regional council hopeful Waye Mason says opening up the polls two weeks before the election is too early because that’s when candidates are kicking their campaigns into high gear and election drama becomes most interesting. “That’s when you see the media giving candidates the most coverage, people as well as the candidates are engaging more,” said Mason, who’s running in District 7. “I just don’t know that people really know what decision they want to make yet.”

National: How Close Are We to Internet Voting? | Mashable

You can do basically anything online. From booking a flight to securely transmitting medical records to your doctor, from buying groceries to managing your bank account, the web supports all sorts of complex transactions. But one common task has firmly resisted the lure of online convenience: voting. At least mostly. There is actually some online voting already happening in very limited ways. At least 32 states and the District of Columbia will allow military or overseas voters to return absentee ballots via email, fax or an Internet portal, in effect offering a form of remote electronic voting to some segment of the population. But for the majority of voters, a trip to a polling place will be necessary to cast a vote in this year’s election. Why is that? Surely, if engineers can figure out how to safeguard your medical records or transfer large sums of money over the Internet, beaming a vote from your living room should be a piece of cake. That’s a popular refrain among proponents of Internet voting systems, and on the surface, it makes sense. If security-obsessed industries like banking and medicine have embraced the Internet, why is voting still stuck in the relative dark ages? As with most things, the reality is a bit more complicated. According to VerifiedVoting.org, a non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the “accuracy, integrity and verifiability” of elections in a digital age, all voting systems should have a few key components. First, there needs to be a fully auditable, preferably voter-verifiable paper trail that maintains the integrity of the secret ballot. Second, voting systems need to have in place strong mechanisms to prevent any undetected changes to votes. Third, systems should not be easily subject to wide-scale service disruptions. Indeed, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), passed in 2002 as a response to the Florida recount debacle of 2000, requires some of these provisions under the law.

Editorials: Beware Electronic Voting | Bob Barr/Town Hall

To paraphrase 15th Century Dutch Philospher Erasmus’ well-known characterization of women — “technology, can’t live with it, can’t live without it.” Ever since the debacle that was the vote counting in Florida a dozen years ago, virtually every jurisdiction in the country has moved away from some form of manual voting machine to embrace the technology of electronic voting (“e-voting” for short). Yet, as states and local elections offices have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to institute e-voting, little attention has been paid the potential dangers inherent in this form of vote counting. Indeed, even as many Republican voters and legislators decry the possibility of voting abuse posed by suspected voter fraud and have ousted for voter ID mandates, the specter of lost votes posed by e-voting continues to go largely unnoticed or deliberately ignored. However, as noted in a recent editorial in USA Today by Philip Meyer, professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, electronic voting machines have the very real “potential to steal your vote.” The problem identified by Meyer is magnified this election cycle, given the high likelihood of another exceptionally tight presidential race.

Voting Blogs: Which States have the Highest Risk of an E-Voting Meltdown? | Freedom to Tinker

Computer scientists, including us, have long been skeptical of electronic voting systems. E-voting systems are computers, with all of the attendant problems. If something goes wrong, can the problem be detected? Can it be fixed? Some e-voting systems are much riskier than others. As the 2012 Presidential election approaches, we decided to evaluate the risk of a “meltdown scenario” in which problems with electronic voting equipment cause a state to cast the deciding electoral college vote that would flip the election winner from one candidate to the other. We’re interested in the risk of these technological problems, weighted by the relative voting power of each voter. So for example, here in New Jersey we use direct-recording electronic voting machines that have been found by a court to be inadequate, but with Obama polling at +14% it’s not likely that a snafu with these machines could change the entire state’s outcome. But in swing states that poll closer to even, like Virginia (where your voting machines can be modified to play Pac-Man), an electronic voting mix-up could have a much bigger impact. So, which states have the greatest risk of an e-voting meltdown affecting the result of the 2012 Presidential election?

Virginia: AVS WINVote Voting Machines Have Vulnerability to Wireless Sabotage | Wall Street Journal

In this November’s presidential election, Virginia voters will cast ballots on machines that use wireless technology state lawmakers barred five years ago to protect voting machines from hackers. Continued reliability and security concerns over electronic voting are not unique to Virginia, or to machines that use wireless technology, but the case illustrates the credibility issues that have plagued electronic voting machines in use across the country in the aftermath of the messy 2000 presidential election, when the federal government mandated changes to election systems and processes. Virginia’s election workers in some precincts use the wireless technology to upload ballots and tally vote totals from multiple machines at a polling station. The wireless electronic tallying is an effort to avoid the human error possible in a manual count. Fears that wireless transmission capabilities could present an opening to hackers led Virginia lawmakers to ban the use of the technology in voting machines in 2007. “It makes it easier to hack systems when you have an open interface that can be accessed remotely from outside the polling place, like in a parking lot,” said Jeremy Epstein, a computer researcher who helped draft the state’s legislation to bar wireless from polling stations. “It magnifies any other vulnerability in the voting system.”

Belgium: Decision to Use Smartmatic Voting Machines Reignites E-voting Debate | CIO.com

Despite vocal mistrust of e-voting, 151 Flemish municipalities in Belgium will use new electronic voting machines in October 14 elections. More than 60 percent of the country’s Flemish citizens as well as voters in the Brussels region will choose their local and provincial leaders using a newly developed Linux-based e-voting system made by Venezuelan company Smartmatic. Belgium has been experimenting with e-voting systems since 1991 and is one of the few European countries that is still using a form of electronic voting. The Netherlands, for instance, banned the use of electronic voting machines in 2008 after a group of activists successfully demonstrated that both types of electronic voting machines then in use could be tampered with. The Federal Constitutional Court in Germany decided in 2009 to stop using electronic voting machines because results from the machines were not verifiable. There were some experiments with e-voting in the U.K., but bigger projects never got a foothold, said a Belgian government report detailing the history of e-voting in Europe. Meanwhile, while a wide variety of voting machines are used in the U.S. and about 20 percent of the population of Estonia votes via the Internet, Belgium is one of the few European countries that still invests in new e-voting technology.

Idaho: Secretary of State says ‘absolutely no truth’ to claim Obama has ordered U.S. votes counted in Spain | Idaho Statesman

Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa is debunking a claim that the federal government has transferred authority to count 2012’s ballots to a Spanish company. Ysursa said he was questioned about the rumor last week after at an Ada County Republican breakfast and responded with a joke. “I just chuckled and said, ‘Well, the Basques have been counting ’em for years — ever since Pete came in,'” Ysursa said, referring to fellow Basque and predecessor, Pete Cenarrusa, Idaho’s chief election official from 1967-2002. But Ysursa, a Republican, told me today that assuring public confidence in the integrity of voting is a serious matter. He dug into the issue after I inquired on behalf of a reader. The reader called saying she’d heard radio talk-show host Michael Savage on KINF 730 allege U.S. votes will be counted in Spain. Depite being determined to be false by the rumor-vetting Snopes.com, the blogosphere is rife with such speculation. In April, Savage said that a Spanish count is part of President Obama’s plan to “steal” the election. His comments have been excerpted on many blogs.

Pennsylvania: Provisional ballots loom large in Pennsylvania voter id law | mcall.com

Hail the lowly and under-appreciated provisional ballot. If the courts leave Pennsylvania’s voter ID law in place for the November election, this rarely used paper stand-in for the modern electronic voting machine could be all that stands between a voter who shows up at the polls without an acceptable ID and electoral disappointment. But just filling out the ballot on Nov. 6 won’t be enough. Under the law, voters who complete provisional ballots because they failed to bring an ID to the polls must provide proof of ID to their county voter registration office within six days of voting for their votes to count. The ID can be emailed, faxed, mailed or brought to the office in person, and must be accompanied by a signed affirmation that the voter cast a provisional ballot.

National: Electronic voting’s the real threat to elections | USAToday.com

Imagine how easy voting would be if Americans could cast ballots the same way they buy songs from iTunes or punch in a PIN code to check out at the grocery store: You could click on a candidate from a home computer or use a touch screen device at the local polling place. It’s not entirely a fantasy. In many states, some voters can already do both. The process is seductively simple, but it’s also shockingly vulnerable to problems from software failure to malicious hacking. While state lawmakers burn enormous energy in a partisan fight over in-person vote fraud, which is virtually nonexistent, they’re largely ignoring far likelier ways votes can be lost, stolen or changed. How? Sometimes, technology or the humans running it simply fail.

Mississippi: Democrats request return of paper audit trail printers in Chickasaw County | chickasaw360.com

The Chickasaw County Board of Supervisors heard a request from the Democratic Executive Committee to reinstate the paper trail in the electronic voting machines at their Sept. 4 meeting. Circuit Clerk Sandra Willis said when the Diebold machines were first installed, the county paid for an addition of an attachment that provided a paper readout of the voter’s choices, but the machine additions did not work well and were discontinued. Willis said the $250 additions jammed often and most voters never asked for copies of their voting choices to be printed, instead reading them on the electronic screen and approving them. However, Willis also said the additions could be reinstalled if the board so chose. “It will cost you more money and more headaches,” Willis warned.

National: Decade-Old E-Voting ‘Wars’ Continue into Presidential Election | Wall Street Journal

A decade after Dana Debeauvoir helped change Travis County, Texas to an all-electronic voting system she still expects to be falsely accused of fixing the coming election, just as she had in the last two presidential races. The clerk, who has administered voting for 25 years in the county that includes Austin, says the public has remained mistrustful of the ballot system, where voters pick candidates directly from a computer screen, without marking a piece of paper. “There have been so many hard feelings,” says Debeauvoir. “You get people saying ‘I know you have been flipping votes.’” In the wake of the hanging chad controversy surrounding the 2000 presidential elections, the federal government encouraged election administrators across the country to switch to electronic systems and mandated upgrades to many election procedures. As they prepare for the presidential elections, those officials now find themselves at the center of a continuing debate over whether paperless direct-record electronic (DRE) balloting can be trusted – what Debeauvoir calls the “DRE wars.”

India: Supreme Court to examine plea on electronic voting machines printers | The Economic Times

The Supreme Court today agreed to take up for hearing on priority basis Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy’s plea to incorporate paper printouts in electronic voting machines or restore paper balloting system allegedly because EVMs “are not tamper proof.” “We will hear the matter on a priority basis so that it is concluded by the next parliamentary elections. That is the reason we are giving the priority,” said a bench of justices P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi. The bench adjourned the matter for further hearing on September 27 after hearing Swamy’s submission for over an hour and asked the Election Commission to be prepared with its submission.

US Virgin Islands: Voters make use of paper ballots | Virgin Islands Daily News

When residents headed to the polls to cast their vote in the 2012 Primary election on Saturday, some used an option that they had not had for a number of years: paper ballots. In April, the Senate Rules and Judiciary Committee amended and passed the bill to allow for the use of paper ballots. The paper ballots bill, sponsored by Sen. Neville James and co-sponsored by Sen. Celestino White Sr., allowed voters to choose whether they wanted to vote by machine or by paper ballot. As written, it also requires that all paper ballots be counted after the closing of the polls, at the same time that electronic ballots are counted on election night. The move to give residents the option of using paper ballots was prompted by a group of voters who complained that the use of the electronic voting machines opened the door for manipulation and tampering of a person’s vote. They also said that there has been documented instances where the voting machines have failed and a voter’s vote may not have been registered.

Venezuela: Voting drill in Venezuela | Al Jazeera

Sunday’s unusual “mock”elections are meant to test Venezuela’s newest innovation to its electronic voting system. Coming from a country where we still have to mark ballots by hand, fold them and then stuff then into cardboard boxes, this system is really quite state of the art. A machine now verifies a voter’s identification with his or her thumb print. It must be the same thumb print that appears on a person’s national identification card. After about 15 seconds, the machine gives the green light to go to the actual voting booth. There, you find a touch screen system to select the candidate of choice: President Hugo Chavez of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela, or his rival Enrique Capriles of the opposition United Coalition. Just touch your candidate’s photo and another screen asks you to select YES or NO. It is very fast, easy and designed to make multiple voting impossible.

Rhode Island: Secretary of State says voter fraud claims are ‘concerning’ | WPRI.com

Rhode Island Secretary of State Ralph Mollis said the voter fraud allegations made by congressional candidate Anthony Gemma were “concerning” and questioned whether the candidate should have held a news conference to present his findings. “You have someone going on for a half hour with allegations and not much to back it up,” said Ralph Mollis. “You want people to participate and to have confidence in the process.” On Wednesday Anthony Gemma leveled stunning allegations of voter fraud against his Democratic rival, incumbent Congressman David Cicilline. Those allegations included coaxing people to vote, getting individuals to cast multiple ballots at multiple polling places, teaching underage individuals how to vote fraudulently, abusing the absentee ballot system, using dead voters’ names to cast ballots, tampering with electronic voting machines and registering to vote at businesses and vacant lots. Gemma claimed the fraud took place in Providence between 2002 and 2010.

Florida: Cause of Pinellas County voting glitch still a mystery | Tampa Bay Times

Pinellas County officials still don’t know exactly what went wrong with the county’s election system during Tuesday’s primary. Minutes after the polls closed, election workers found themselves unable to electronically transmit the vote tallies to the main office in Largo. Instead, they drove the memory sticks to election headquarters, delaying publication of the final results by about 90 minutes. The problem, county officials said, came from the phone lines leading into the server. But on Wednesday they could not say what might have caused the phone lines to fail, or how quickly county technicians would be able to repair them. Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark on Tuesday promised that the system would be up and running in time for the Nov. 6 general election. “They’ll just have to look and see where the problem came from and they’ve assured us they’ll work to take care of it as soon as possible,” said spokeswoman Nancy Whitlock.

Canada: Credibility of democracy put at risk by online voting | Vancouver Sun

Chief electoral officer Keith Archer has announced the formation of a panel of experts to investigate whether British Columbia should adopt Internet voting. Let’s hope the panel focuses on the big picture before getting bogged down with technical details. Our democracy is built on the assurance of a secret ballot and the principle that one person gets only one vote. Under the current voting system, a voter casts his or her vote in the view of polling officials who ensure the voter is alone while marking the ballot — free of coercion. By contrast, any system that allows voters to fill out their ballot outside the supervision of officials cannot be truly secret. There are no safeguards to prevent someone looking over your shoulder while you vote on a smartphone. There’s no App for that. When you mark your paper ballot and place it in the ballot box, a magical thing happens; the ballot mixes with other ballots and you cease to have a copy. No one involved in the election process can connect you to your vote and you can’t prove how you voted.

Canada: Security of BC online voting proposal cited as a concern | Kamloops This Week

He’s spent the summer chatting with voters via Twitter and a web-based video feed, but when it come to actually casting ballots, Coun. Arjun Singh is still a fan of the voting booth. “I like the idea of being able to go into a booth where some other people are there and they can monitor whether people are being influenced or coerced,” Singh said. The B.C. government has announced it will ask the province’s chief electoral officer to strike an independent panel to examine Internet voting. Attorney General Shirley Bond said adding online voting to the range of options in B.C. could improve accessibility in elections — which could improve voter turnout that sagged to less than 30 per cent on average in the last round of B.C. municipal elections. The panel will examine “best practices” for online votes in other provinces and jurisdictions. However, critics of online voting argue there is more room for manipulation of online voting — or, just as problematically, claims of manipulation.

National: Rep. Hank Johnson Introduces Legislation for Election Accuracy | Tucker, GA Patch

Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04, which includes parts of Tucker) has introduced the bipartisan Verifying Official Totals for Elections or VOTE Act, H.R. 6246, which would require jurisdictions using electronic voting machines for federal elections to deposit the software or source code in the National Software Reference Library at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In the case of a contested election and or recount, the VOTE Act would allow qualified persons to review the source code to ensure its accuracy and reliability.

Canada: Elections British Columbia studying online voting | CTV

B.C. voters may soon have the option of casting their ballots online in municipal and provincial elections. An Elections BC panel will start studying the voting method as early as September after being asked by the provincial government to research the potential risks and advantages associated with it. The request came almost a year after B.C.’s chief electoral officer Keith Archer recommended the government consider changing legislation to allow for trial-runs of new voting technologies. “Under current legislation that envisions a voting process that is entirely paper-based, Elections BC is unable to conduct trials of these new technologies,” said Archer in a November 2011 report. “Legislators may wish to consider providing greater flexibility to the Chief Electoral Officer to introduce, on a pilot basis, a variety of new voting technologies.” While there are some cities that use online voting, such as Halifax, no provinces in Canada yet do so for provincial elections.

National: Partisan Rifts Hinder Efforts to Improve U.S. Voting System | NYTimes.com

Twelve years after a too-close-to-call presidential contest imploded in a hail of Florida punch card ballots and a bitter 5-to-4 Supreme Court ruling for George W. Bush, the country’s voting systems remain as deeply flawed as ever with any prospect of fixing them mired in increasing levels of partisanship. The most recent high-profile fights have been about voter identification requirements and whether they are aimed at stopping fraud or keeping minority group members and the poor from voting. But there are worse problems with voter registration, ballot design, absentee voting and electoral administration. In Ohio, the recommendations of a bipartisan commission on ways to reduce the large number of provisional ballots and long lines at polling stations in 2008 have come to naught after a Republican takeover of both houses of the legislature in 2010. In New York, a redesign of ballots that had been widely considered hard to read and understand was passed by the State Assembly this year. But a partisan dispute in the Senate on other related steps led to paralysis. And states have consistently failed to fix a wide range of electoral flaws identified by a bipartisan commission led by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James A. Baker III in 2005. In Florida, for example, the commission found 140,000 voters who had also registered in four other states — some 46,000 of them in New York City alone. When 1,700 of them registered for absentee ballots in the other state, no one investigated. Some 60,000 voters were also simultaneously registered in North and South Carolina.

National: Wide Divide In States’ Voting Preparedness | CBS DC

Nearly four months before the 2012 national elections, a study on U.S. voting preparedness has found that some states are far more ready than others. Minnesota, New Hampshire, Ohio, Vermont and Wisconsin were all labeled as the “best prepared” states for voting problems and disenfranchisement protection. While on the other hand, Colorado, Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina are the six “least-prepared” states. The Rutgers Law School released the study that evaluates each state’s preparedness for the 2012 election. According to the study, computerized voting systems have failed in every national election in the past decade in some way: they haven’t started, they failed in the middle of voting, the memory cards couldn’t be read, or the votes were lost as a whole. The study used five categories of proven failures and successes as its basis for judgment in each state. They also protect against machine failures that can change election outcomes and disenfranchised voters.

Venezuela: Electoral Commission Ramps up Security Measures | venezuelanalysis.com

With just over 10 weeks before the realization of the country’s presidential elections, Venezuela’s National Electoral Commission (CNE) is tightening its preparations for October 7 through heightened security measures and high-tech anti-fraud initiatives. On Sunday, the CNE closed enrollment for the initiative known as “Make Your Mark” which obliges enlisted voters to register their thumbprint with the electoral authority in order to ensure the integrity and veracity of the electronic ballots cast at polling stations around the country. The measure began on June 22 and has successfully updated the prints of more than 3 million people through the deployment of over 3,000 registration machines made available to residents in 1,600 enrollment points throughout the country.

Wisconsin: Group seeks hand count of ballots from June vote | LaCrosse Tribune

A group that wants to examine all of the La Crosse County ballots from the June recall vote will have to wait until after the November election. County Clerk Ginny Dankmeyer said her staff doesn’t have the time right now to accommodate Election Fairness’ open records request to do a hand count. Election Fairness made the request to all 72 Wisconsin counties July 2. The group’s attorney, James Mueller, did not respond to a phone call Thursday for comment. But he told the Janesville Gazette earlier this month they believe electronic voting machines could be faulty and vulnerable to tampering. They want to see if discrepancies appear between their tally and the machines’ tally.

Brazil: Smartmatic Wins Election Services in Brazil, the Largest Market in Latin America | GNT

Smartmatic Has Been Awarded a Contract with the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE) for the Continuous Preventive Maintenance, Testing and Support Services of Its Electronic Voting Machines. Smartmatic, a global provider of electoral solutions, announced today it has been awarded a contract with the Superior Electoral Court of Brazil (TSE) for the continuous preventive maintenance, testing and support services of the electronic voting machines during the elections. After rigorous testing and evaluation of proposals, the bid was awarded to the ESF Consortium -composed by Smartmatic Brasil Ltda and Smartmatic International Corporation, with local partners Engetec and Fixti. The ESF Consortium presented the best offer and fully complied with all legal and technical requirements stated by the Brazilian Superior Electoral Court (TSE), in the tender process that began on May 30th.

New York: NYC Board Of Elections, Meet The 21st Century | New York Daily News

After the hullaballoo over reporting primary-night results in the NY-13 race, the board commissioners voted today to have the flash drives (aka “memory sticks”) that capture results from electronic voting machines transported to police precincts and downloaded directly into BOE laptops. The change will, it’s hoped, avoid the lost in addition/transfer problems that led state Sen. Adriano Espaillat to prematurely concede to incumbent Rep. Charlie Rangel the night of the June 26 Democratic contest. Bronx GOP Commissioner J.C. Polanco, who lobbied heavily for a change from the old cut-and-add system, called it “a good day. “I think New Yorkers are going to appreciate having accurate tallies at the end of the night. I think that working closely with the NYPD, we’ll be able to get it done and make sure that the numbers that are reflected in the unofficial results are close to the results on the scanner,” Polanco, who’s presumably still waiting for that apology from Espaillat, told The Daily Politics. Under the new plan, cops will take the memory sticks back to precincts, where BOE staffers (under bipartisan supervision) will dump the results into the computers. The change will cost about $300,000 in new laptops. “The good thing about this proposal is that it eliminates the potential for human error that is present when we have our co-workers tallying results at the end of the night and doing data entry back at the precincts,” Polanco said. “That’s why I’m excited about it and that’s why I’m happy it passed unanimously.”

Ireland: E-Voting machines finally put to use | TheJournal.ie

A Tullamore-based recycling company which recently purchased 7,500 mostly unused e-voting machines from the State has made a generous donation to a children’s charity. KMK Metals Recycling presented Barretstown with a cheque for €10,000 today after it decided to go ahead with the donation despite not being allowed to sell any of the machines for the cause. Kurt Kyck bought the machines last month with intentions of selling 100 of them to raise funds for the Kildare residential camp for children with serious illness. However, he was advised by the Department of the Environment that the machines should be put entirely beyond functional use and could not be sold. “My staff were disappointed and so when we looked at the figures it was agreed that we were in a position to go ahead with the donation to Barretstown,” he said.