A month before the 2006 general election in the Netherlands, a citizen group of hackers went on Dutch television to showcase the vulnerability of the country’s electronic voting machines. They demonstrated how they played video games on the machine and staged an electoral fraud by inserting a microchip loaded with code.
Watch how it unfolded on Dutch television.
As the machines in question – those produced by Dutch company Nedap – were used by 90 percent of the Dutch population and had also been purchased by Ireland, there was understandable panic. The Dutch government immediately promised a complete overhaul of its certification process for EVMs, but in the meantime the country has returned to paper ballots and red pencils.
National election in 2006
Turnout: 80 percent of eligible voters participated in the last national election in 2006.
Photo: A paper ballot used in the Netherlands.
