X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00800000 X-Mozilla-Keys: Message-ID: <54C45169.2070703@optusnet.com.au> Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 12:14:01 +1000 From: Robert Arthur Beatty Reply-To: BobBeatty@bosmin.com User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.4.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: em@aph.gov.au CC: senator.ronaldson@aph.gov.au, Tony.Abbott.MP@aph.gov.au, J.Hockey.MP@aph.gov.au Subject: Submission: Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="------------090504000501010506090600" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------090504000501010506090600 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Attention: Committee Secretary I refer to Second interim report on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election, and the interim Committee report released on assessment of options for electronic voting. http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/02%20Parliamentary%20Business/24%20Committees/244%20Joint%20Committees/JSCE/2013%20election%202nd%20interim/Full%20report.pdf The media release document from Committee Chair, the Hon Tony Smith MP notes: "/The Committee’s investigation of electronic voting revealed an interplay of security, secrecy, verifiability and cost that complicates electronic voting systems. Mr Smith said that ‘ultimately, the Committee has concluded that electronic voting can’t be introduced in the near future without high costs and unacceptable security risks’./" This conclusion should be urgently reviewed in the light of the ongoing cost associated with not having electronic voting: 1) My review of the 2007 and 2010 elections, available at http://www.bosmin.com/ICS/FederalElections07-10.pdf (bosmin report) shows that significant fraud is already occurring in our voting system, which can alter the true course of our political futures during close run elections, such as the 2010 federal election. 2) The Australian taxpayers are providing enormous sums of money to introduce a National Broadband Network system. It behooves us to maximise the use of this investment by ensuring it can be reliably programed and utilised for National use such as online voting. 3) Electronic voting would provide a mechanism for cost effectively introducing a Citizen's Initiated Referendum (CIR) procedure. This would deliver an opportunity for our citizens to override unrepresentative politically based initiatives. These could have included the Howard government's autocratic overthrow of the NT euthanasia legislation, or the Gillard government's carbon tax. It also countervails the specious political argument of having a "mandate" to cover (or deny) a wish list of election promises. Huge lost opportunity costs, and reversal costs are associated with such issues which makes the cost of introducing electronic voting and CIR pale into insignificance. I draw your attention to the Recommendations in the bosmin report, in particular 8.3 which states: "/Commission Australia Post to keep and update the electoral rolls. Start by requiring all voters to re-register at their local post offices using photo identification, and nominating their preferred polling place./" The AEC offers a website for online registration which would be a well kept secret to most citizens. However, if Australia Post kept the records it would become automatic when people changed address to also update their voting registration. The other big advantage in this proposal is that it provides AP with a much needed additional source of revenue. Online voter passwords could be the same as their tax file numbers. In this way unregistered tax payers would need to explain why they wanted to vote, and if they should be allowed to. In closing, I submit that electronic voting is not a "manyana" issue. It should be introduced with maximum dispatch and the next federal election should be set as the Committee's timing target. Commissioning a team familiar with the Swiss election software would expedite the introduction of electronic voting in Australia. *Please note the bosmin report finds there is much less incentive for a socialist leaning government to introduce electronic voting than there is for a conservative government. A change of government would see a marked slow down in the introduction of these urgently required modifications to our voting procedures.* -- Bob Beatty BE FAusIMM(CP), Principal, BOSMIN 76-78 Hayes Ave, Camira 4300, Qld, AUSTRALIA Phax: +61-7-3288-3101 email: BobBeatty@BOSMIN.com WWW: http://www.BOSMIN.com --------------090504000501010506090600 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Attention: Committee Secretary

I refer to Second interim report on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election, and the interim Committee report released on assessment of options for electronic voting. http://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/02%20Parliamentary%20Business/24%20Committees/244%20Joint%20Committees/JSCE/2013%20election%202nd%20interim/Full%20report.pdf

The media release document from Committee Chair, the Hon Tony Smith MP notes:
"The Committee’s investigation of electronic voting revealed an interplay of security, secrecy, verifiability and cost that complicates electronic voting systems. Mr Smith said that ‘ultimately, the Committee has concluded that electronic voting can’t be introduced in the near future without high costs and unacceptable security risks’."

This conclusion should be urgently reviewed in the light of the ongoing cost associated with not having electronic voting:
1) My review of the 2007 and 2010 elections, available at http://www.bosmin.com/ICS/FederalElections07-10.pdf (bosmin report) shows that significant fraud is already occurring in our voting system, which can alter the true course of our political futures during close run elections, such as the 2010 federal election.
2) The Australian taxpayers are providing enormous sums of money to introduce a National Broadband Network system. It behooves us to maximise the use of this investment by ensuring it can be reliably programed and utilised for National use such as online voting.
3) Electronic voting would provide a mechanism for cost effectively introducing a Citizen's Initiated Referendum (CIR) procedure. This would deliver an opportunity for our citizens to override unrepresentative politically based initiatives. These could have included the Howard government's autocratic overthrow of the NT euthanasia legislation, or the Gillard government's carbon tax. It also countervails the specious political argument of having a "mandate" to cover (or deny) a wish list of election promises.

Huge lost opportunity costs, and reversal costs are associated with such issues which makes the cost of introducing electronic voting and CIR pale into insignificance.

I draw your attention to the Recommendations in the bosmin report, in particular 8.3 which states:
"Commission Australia Post to keep and update the electoral rolls. Start by requiring all voters to re-register at their local post offices using photo identification, and nominating their preferred polling place."
The AEC offers a website for online registration which would be a well kept secret to most citizens. However, if Australia Post kept the records it would become automatic when people changed address to also update their voting registration. The other big advantage in this proposal is that it provides AP with a much needed additional source of revenue.

Online voter passwords could be the same as their tax file numbers. In this way unregistered tax payers would need to explain why they wanted to vote, and if they should be allowed to.

In closing, I submit that electronic voting is not a "manyana" issue. It should be introduced with maximum dispatch and the next federal election should be set as the Committee's timing target. Commissioning a team familiar with the Swiss election software would expedite the introduction of electronic voting in Australia.

Please note the bosmin report finds there is much less incentive for a socialist leaning government to introduce electronic voting than there is for a conservative government. A change of government would see a marked slow down in the introduction of these urgently required modifications to our voting procedures.

--
Bob Beatty BE FAusIMM(CP), Principal, BOSMIN
76-78 Hayes Ave, Camira 4300, Qld, AUSTRALIA
Phax: +61-7-3288-3101
email: BobBeatty@BOSMIN.com
WWW: http://www.BOSMIN.com
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