April 16, 2005, Jamie Smyth (The Irish Times)

The Commission on Electronic Voting has awarded a contract to a defence firm partly owned by the British government to test if the new Irish electronic voting system is secure.

The contract award to QinetiQ is the first of several tests to determine whether the Government introduces electronic voting or maintains the traditional ballot.

The Government was forced to delay plans to introduce electronic voting last year when the security of the €52 million system bought by the State could not be guaranteed by the Commission on Electronic Voting.

The commission is now undertaking a more detailed review of the security of the Nedap-Powervote electronic voting system.

The first stage of the security review will cost €32,700 but subsequent phases will cost significantly more and add to the final bill for electronic voting.

The commission's choice of a supplier to undertake a review of the electronic system could also prove controversial.

QinetiQ was formerly the national defence laboratory of the Ministry of Defence in Britain. It is now a private company.

However the British government retains a 56 per cent stake in the firm.

The remainder is held by US private equity firm Carlyle Group and QinetiQ staff.

Former British prime minister John Major and former US secretary of state James Baker are on the advisory board of Carlyle Group.

Carlyle has invested heavily in defence industries and was a focus of Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11.

The film said that both the Bush family and the bin Laden families had links to Carlyle Group.

Former US president George Bush snr was a senior adviser and board member of Carlyle Group, while the bin Laden family invested in the group in the mid-1990s.

One complaint levied against the Government's choice of e-voting system was that it was developed by a Dutch national, making a court challenge to an electronic vote in the Republic difficult.

Last week senior members of the Progressive Democrats at their party conference described the system as "expensive, undemocratic and unworkable" and called for it to be scrapped.

Under the terms of the contract QinetiQ will undertake an initial review of the computer software on which the e-voting system is based.

It will advise on a range of further tests that will need to be conducted in future reviews to determine if the system is secure and secret.