A secure democratic Net is a fundamental right

Yesterday there were elections in Belgium. In some cities these elections were electronic, in others they were on paper. The electronic elections had about 400 incidents (on 25.000 machines).

In Belgium you could vote for the regional parliaments and for the European parliament. In Belgium citizens of the EU could vote only for the European parliament. In Brussels the vote was electronic.

Now it seems that in at least 3 cases citizens of the EU who could vote for the European parliament but not for the regional Brussels parliament had the screen to vote for the Brussels Parliament after they had voted for the European parliament. They said they used that vote, even if they normally couldn't.

This means that more people can have voted for the Brussels parliament than those that legally could have. SO these votes were illegal. It is not clear yet if there has been a control and how these votes have been cleaned out. This should have been done by taking the number of Belgian voters and the number of votes for the Brussels parliament. These should have been equal. It is not clear yet if this is the case and if it isn't if the difference could have made a difference.

With paper votes it is simple. You give the voting bulletins according to the status of the voter who presents himself. No voting bulletins for EU citizens for the regional parliaments. With electronic voting there is always something that can go wrong somewhere and there is nobody to check it. It should be checked. Because in any election any mistake should be checked and corrected. There is nothing worse for democracy than doubts about the legitimacy of the results.

As there are so few controls and supervisors (and activists) one should control this now. Because if this was possible with 3 voters how many others did also vote without having the right to that we don't know about ? Especially in Brussels and the provinces around it where the number of EU citizens is quite high.