Gotterbarn was speaking at a recent Wellington meeting of the Computer Society. The East Tennessee State University academic is currently Visiting Professor of Software Ethics at the Auckland University of Technology.

Gotterbarn used electronic voting as a prime example of such failure. He told horror stories about U.S. counties returning eight times as many votes as there were people, and of voting terminals seemingly designed with no thought as to whether or not they were actually usable.

'I'm sure there's an army of elderly voters [out there] clamoring to use screens too tiny to see,' commented Gotterbarn.

New Zealand's chief electoral officer, Robert Peden, heard all this as he sat in the front row, aware that the decision has already been made not to opt for online voting for the 2008 General Election.

U.S.-style electronic voting is further compromised by a 'confidential' attitude which greets questions concerning inconsistencies in the system with the stock response, 'That's a trade secret," said Gotterbarn.