A father and son wanted Germany to stop using electronic voting machines because they believe them to be vulnerable to manipulation. They have brought their case before Germany's highest court, the Federal Constitutional Court.
In the 2005 German general election, almost two million people voted using electronic voting machines.
The voting machines in question are manufactured by the Dutch firm Nedap and do not print out receipts. Constanze Kurz, a spokesman for the Berlin-based hacker group Chaos Computer Club, calls the machine a "black box," and likens their use to relying on an oracle to decide elections. "You never know what's going to come out," she told Agence-France Presse on Saturday. Both the machine's software as well as its hardware are vulnerable, said Kurz. In addition to hackers accessing the voting system, the biggest concern is that a machine's memory card, which stores voting data, could be adulterated or simply replaced on its way to the vote tabulation center.
A group of hackers successfully tampered with similar machines in the Netherlands in 2006 and then went public with their doctored results, inspiring the Dutch government to impose a moratorium on the use of electronic voting machines. Ireland also has bans electronic voting.
German election law, however, permits their use, and the German parliament already rejected a petition signed by over 45,000 people to try to ban electronic voting back in 2005. That's why the Wiesners, who were also behind the petition drive, have decided to try their luck with the Constitutional Court.
A coupled of minutes ago, the court's decission was published that the use of those machines isn't according to our constitution. (However, the general election hasn't to be done again, the court ruled.)
More later (other material used above from on older article at
Spiegel-online).
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