Will Ockenden reported this story on Saturday, August 6, 2016 08:16:00

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Concerns have been raised about the Australian Electoral Commission's process of electronically counting ballot preferences for the Senate.



Election technology experts say they're concerned that, once the vote preferences are in the computer system, there's no final check with the original ballot paper to ensure accuracy.



Will Ockenden reports.



WILL OCKENDEN: Counting millions and millions of Senate votes is a highly complex task, so after the first preferences are counted manually, the rest of the job is turned over to a computer.



In order for it to do its job, all those ballot papers need to be captured by scanning and then put into a database. From there, they can be counted.



But there are concerns that the digital capture process used by the Australian Electoral Commission isn't as transparent as it could be.



VANESSA TEAGUE: Every other time that we've had a chance to look carefully at election software, we've found either a programming error or a security problem that potentially could have affected the results.



WILL OCKENDEN: That's Dr Vanessa Teague, a senior lecturer in the Department of Computing and Information Systems at the University of Melbourne.



VANESSA TEAGUE: Election software is exactly same as every other piece of software. There's always the possibility that there'll be a security hole or a software bug.



And what we need is evidence that the output accurately matches the input, rather than having to rely on the system being perfectly secure and perfectly correct - because the odds are that it's probably not.



WILL OCKENDEN: The Australian Electoral Commission's Senate voting system is split into two parts.



Firstly, there's the system where votes are captured by scanning and the numbers on the ballot are electronically interpreted. To ensure that's accurate, a human operator also enters the numbers into the system. The two are then checked and, if they match, the vote is added to the database.



The second part of the system, which is separate from the first, counts the votes. It outputs the results and the preference information for every formal vote.



But Dr Teague says if, for some reason, the system shows the scrutineer the wrong information when the votes are being checked off, the problems may not be caught.



VANESSA TEAGUE: It's really important as part of the scrutineering process to show the scrutineers evidence that that final preference data file really does accurately reflect the intentions of the eligible voters, as expressed in the paper evidence.



WILL OCKENDEN: Another expert with concerns is IT consultant Ian Brightwell. He was formerly the CIO and director of IT at the NSW Electoral Commission and ran the state's electronic voting system, iVote, for two elections.



IAN BRIGHTWELL: Well, what can go wrong is what can go wrong with any system. You can have bugs and faults in the system. You could have someone do something nefarious to the system, but that's unlikely.



WILL OCKENDEN: He says the AEC could simply improve the process by checking a statistically significant sample of computer-outputted vote preferences with the original ballot papers.



IAN BRIGHTWELL: The only way you can be certain that there hasn't been a problem in preferences is that the numbers are checked by a random sample. And that gives near-as-damn absolute certainty that your processes work properly.



WILL OCKENDEN: In a statement, the Australian Electoral Commission says its new system introduced a higher level of oversight by scrutineers than has ever been the case.



A spokesman says that the AEC remains confident that its measures put in place have ensured the integrity of the Senate count.



And the spokesman says that, for future elections, the AEC will keep evaluating system security and, if appropriate, implement additional assurance mechanisms to maintain integrity.



ELIZABETH JACKSON: Will Ockenden reporting.