Elections

[pvaneynd]

Last weekend there were elections here in Belgium.
My brother was selected to 'sit', so he had to go early in the morning and was a member of the group that does the elections for a part of the town he's in. He told me a bit about the electronic voting method that could be of interest to people:

• When you go you have to take your voting card and your ID. They check the card and the ID (with the picture on it) against a list of voters and if it checks out you get a magnetic voting cardwith this card you enter the booth where there is a normal PC with a card reader, you enter the card and with a light-pen indicate and confirm you choice
• then you go and deposit the card in an urn and you get your ID and the voter card with a 'voted' mark (voting is compulsory, not having the mark could get you into prison)
• the vote PC's are older plain PC's without a HD or a network card. They only have a floppy drive, a screen with a light-pen attached
• one of the PC's gets connected to the electronic urn in which you have to deposit your magnetic vote card after voting. It shows that you voted correctly, that the card is readable and if you are a Belgian or not (the Belgians have to vote for 2 elections, the non-Belgians for one)
• the same PC is used to verify the card before voting and to select if it is for a Belgian or a non-Belgian
• All PC arrive off and you have to insert a floppy to boot them, after entering a 8 or 9 digit pin the PC is operational and the floppy is removed and the access to the drive is locked
• at the start of the election and at a random moment during the day an official with a witness votes with a set of special cards on every PC. The witness indicates what selection was made and the card with the paper indicating the vote and the signatures of the official and the witness is sealed and put away for later investigation
• after voting the total number of votes on a paper is compared to the one returned by the urn (to check for votes-by-proxy etc)
• then the urn is sealed and sent off to a counting station where they are emptied and voted, the results are then send to Brussels and the re-sealed urn follows

From what I've heard it would be difficult to subvert with the random test in the day, I would just advice to have more then two random tests.

Now the really nice part is that the extreme-right did not win so much nor in Antwerp, nor in Edegem. But Boom for example are going to be a problem...