Few what-if scenarios curdle the blood like the near-successful Fianna Fáil plan to bulldoze ahead with an electronic voting system 22 years ago. It was the digital equivalent of a government paying a private company to bundle all our paper votes off to a hidden location for a secret count, before emerging with the final result. An unverifiable result, to be clear. No paper trail or independent verification processes were built into the system.

There was a rationale of sorts behind the effort. Ireland had seen marathon counts, but never one to equal the notorious 2000 US presidential count which, after a vicious 35-day legal battle in the swing state of Florida, ultimately favoured George W Bush over Al Gore. The winning margin was 537 votes out of nearly 6 million. Raging disputes over “butterfly” ballots (confusing layout), “dimpled”/“hanging”/”pregnant” chads (bits of paper remaining or dangling in voters’ punch cards), illegal overseas ballots and much else were finally settled by a (still fiercely debated) Supreme Court decision. All of which caused a massive rush to electronic voting in the aftermath.

A Celtic Tigerish Ireland took a look and decided it wanted one too. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said we were a “laughing stock” with our use of the “peann luaidhe”. We had grown too sophisticated for the aul’ paper ballots, stubby pencils, and interminable counts and recounts surveyed by gimlet-eyed tally-people. Nedap voting machines were duly bought, and the plan........

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