BBV: Any DU'ers from Northern Ireland?

[Kelvin Mace]

Does anyone know what kind of votings machines are used in Ulster?

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. I'm from England, not Northern Ireland

but almost certainly it's pure paper ballots - the standard voting system in England, and, I think, the rest of the UK (and the Republic of Ireland, too, I think, from some previous poster).
There have been some experiments with text-message voting in local elections in the UK, but I doubt that was done this time in NI - they have been trying to cut down on voter fraud by asking for photo identification - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3236998.stm

[Kelvin Mace]

2. I read somewhere that

the UK was jumping on the TS bandwagon, and wondered whether it had spread to NI.

David Allen
Publisher, CEO, Janitor
Plan Nine Publishing
http://www.plan9.org

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. it's only a few experiments so far

aimed at increasing the voting rate. See eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2970577.stm . This does mention 'electronic kiosks' as well as text messaging, the Internet, digital TV, and all-postal ballots. The last seems to be the most successful so far - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/3159153.stm .

Elections here tend to be pretty simple - a vote for local councils, and maybe one for county councils, European elections, or parliament. It's rare to get more than 2 ballot papers to fill in, and these are easy to count by hand.

[RedEagle]

4. Somewhere....

...in Ireland they went to evoting. Seems a long standing fight for a big corporation to come in and build something was won just as soon as they went to evoting, leaving the locals scratching their heads.

But I don't know now where that story is. A google might turn it up, try Jason Kitkat's site for starters.