The introduction of electronic voting in June's elections has been supported by the two electoral returning officers who have run elections under the new system to date, despite renewed complaints.
The strong defence came yesterday from the Dublin County Sheriff, Mr John Fitzpatrick, and the Meath County Registrar, Ms Maura Teehan.
It followed the release of documents by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to Mr Joe McCarthy, a leading critic of the system.
They showed, Mr McCarthy claimed, that 1,294 votes had gone missing in the 2002 general election in Dublin North, while 716 too many had been counted in Dublin West.
However, Mr Fitzpatrick discounted Mr McCarthy's claims last night and said the errors were due to paperwork mistakes by polling station staff that did not affect the final result.
"The pilot schemes were there to find problems with the system. They did that, and changes were made," he told The Irish Times.
Staff had found the original voter reconciliation forms to be too complicated. "Some of the forms that were sent back were absolutely dreadful," he said.
In one case, a polling officer had reported that 600 people had taken ballot papers and then not voted, rather than listing them as the total that had voted in his station.
Asked if he supported the national introduction of electronic voting, Mr Fitzpatrick said: "Absolutely. We spent an awful lot of work on this."
Mr Fitzpatrick has used electronic voting in Dáil elections in Dublin North and Dublin West in 2002, and in Dublin Mid West, Dublin South, Dublin South West and Dún Laoghaire in the Nice Treaty referendum.
"I was nervous because I am not a child of the computer age. We went over it and over it. Eventually I was happy using it," he said.
He had originally disliked being told to do all of the counts at one go.
"I wanted to do it count by count. That has been changed since," he said.
"I am quite happy with the system. There were problems with human error, but the glitches have been taken out. I hope. I am happy to use it."
Ms Teehan was equally positive about electronic voting.
"I had no problems," she said. "It is surely the way that we are going to go. We do everything else by computer. A huge amount of things are controlled by computers, and we don't query them."
Meanwhile, a tns mrbi opinion poll commissioned by Fine Gael found that 47 per cent of the electorate favour electronic voting, while 37 per cent want it delayed pending further checks.
"It is very worrying that this issue has effectively split public opinion. The Government is pushing ahead with an electronic voting system that does not have the confidence of the people," said Mr Bernard Allen, Fine Gael's environment spokesman.
"It risks reducing voter turnout even further and alienating people from the political process. The Government has committed itself to a headlong rush."
The Government, he said, had failed to take account of "the views of electronic experts who have raised serious and vital questions about the security of the system being proposed".
The commission set up to investigate electronic voting is due to report by May 1st to the Ceann Comhairle, Dr Rory O'Hanlon. The Government has said that it has the freedom to recommend the postponement of the change.
Mr Allen said the Government should delay until a statutory independent electoral commission had been set up, with broad terms of reference to ensure that a system is secure, safe and acceptable.
Meanwhile, the Green Party said the documents released under the Freedom of Information Act to Mr McCarthy had revealed "shocking lapses in both security and accuracy" in voting security.
"A good e-voting system would be fine. The trouble with the proposed system is that it doesn't provide any kind of verifiable audit trail," said Ms Catherine Ansbro, who is contesting the Roscommon local election.
