Voting With the Touch of a Button

One million Germans will have the option of casting aside pen and paper ballot in the upcoming Sept. 22 federal elections in favor of the button push of an automatic voting machine.

After a successful test run in European parliamentary elections in 1999, Germany’s voting authority has introduced money machine-style voting boxes in 29 communities – including Cologne and Dortmund – where voters will be able to select their parties electronically.

“It worked in the European elections and we have no reason to think that this election should be any different,” said Heinz-Christoph Herbertz, expert on parliamentary elections for the Federal Statistics Office.

Herbertz said the machines, produced in Holland, are failsafe and extremely easily to use. Voters make their selections on a suitcase-sized PC on the voting booth table and can see their choices on an eye-level screen. If someone hits a wrong key or invalidates the ballot in away, a message saying so flashes on screen, said Herbertz.

“We’ve practically ruled out that people will unintentionally invalidate their ballots,” he said.

Failsafe boxes

Herbertz also sees no cause for concern about electronic failures. The voting machines aren’t hooked up to the Internet and the machine’s processor has been security-tested. Herbertz said that a large majority of the more than 272,000 voters who tested out the machines in Cologne during the 1999 European parliament elections had no complaints.

Vote counters will also have an easier time. Rather than painstakingly counting out each paper vote, the head of the polling station will be able to get results from the machine's databank within minutes of pressing the print button.

The machines are being looked at as a precursor to Internet voting, which has yet to be approved by the German government. Because of security concerns and the availability of the World Wide Web to every voter, Internet voting is still a long way off, according to the National Election Office.

"A vast majority of citizens must get used to using the Internet to take care of everyday business," before turning to it as a voting method, according to an election office statement.