A Swiss canton has suspended its pilot of electronic voting after failing to count 2,048 votes cast in national referendums held on March 8.

Basel-Stadt announced the problem with its e-voting pilot, open to about 10,300 locals living abroad and 30 people with disabilities, last Friday afternoon. It encouraged participants to deliver a paper vote to the town hall or use a polling station but admitted this would not be possible for many.

By the close of polling on Sunday, its e-voting system had collected 2,048 votes, but Basel-Stadt officials were not able to decrypt them with the hardware provided, despite the involvement of IT experts.

"Three USB sticks were used, all with the correct code, but none of them worked," spokesperson Marco Greiner told the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation's Swissinfo service.

The canton has since commissioned an external analysis of the incident, adding that it deeply regrets the violation of affected voters' political rights.

Huh. A functioning government apologizing for disenfranchisement.

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[–] 1 point 8 months ago (1 child)

Electronic voting sucks. No way to audit anything.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    2048 is a suspiciously round number (it's 2^11^) to the point that I came into the article expecting to read about an error affecting some subset of the records. But no, that's the exact number of votes cast using the system, out of a larger and less round pool of potential voters.

    So apparently it's a coincidence, but it's making my brain itch.

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  • 1 comment in c/pulse_of_truth@infosec.pub view that post
    [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    The unreliability of thumb drives strikes again.

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  • 1 comment in c/cash@slrpnk.net view that post
    [–] 1 point 3 months ago*

    Switzerland does not strike me as having a notable level of corruption or tax evasion, so nothing could even masquerade as a “good reason” for a cashless society there. I imagine the Swiss are also smart about national security and how a cashless society would compromise that. So not surprising the population opposes the war on cash.

    But I guess the irony is that the politicians are not voting with the people despite Switzerland being known for having a direct democracy (even to an inappropriate extent considering how people vote on whether each naturalization candidate can take Swiss nationality).

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  • 1 comment in c/crypto@infosec.pub view that post
    [–] 1 point 8 months ago
    1 comment in c/suisse@jlai.lu view that post
    [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Ca aurait rien changé au résultats. J’espère ils apprendront leur lesson et amélioreront leur systeme.

    C’est pas une raison d’abandonner l’e-vote car ca peut etre tres utiles pour les handi et puis les gens a l’etranger.

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