Wednesday 22 Nov. elections were held for the second chamber and indirect the national 'kabinet', of the Dutch government. For decades these elections were held mostly in sports room of low-grade schools with paper and pencil. Times are changing and there came the voting computer. A team of worried civilians and computer experts: wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl brought the safety issues with these voting computers to media attention. The democracy worked and with less than a month time before election, government declared the current voting computers too insecure with privacy to use at this point.

The voting computer had only been used already at one occasion in Amsterdam. And the paper voting attribute like boot and collecting cans had been sold of. The capital city Amsterdam had to improvise quick to provide the necessities for 490 voting locations. The most important part of voting with paper is human team force to create one big calculating machine spread over several locations. Some of the people of the voting location were happy the diabolic computer had been exorcized, even if it means a manual counting task until midnight. Others dreaded the repetitive chore of counting and will welcome the return of the voting computer, even if the totals can be changed by just one person without any sign of malpractice.

There are many aspects of the paper vote trail that can be automated without safety risk. One of the facets of the giant human-paper machine comes after the vote closes, opening each voting one paper after another. Handling each of these sheet of paper can be more simple if the paper shape and folding is changed into a long zigzag. Use a punch instead of a pencil and a modernised mechanical organ to read the papers. However knowing humankind favouritism for laziness it is not unlikely that in the future voting will be done over the internet, or at a creditcard automate.

Mathilde μP