E-voting pilots cancelled
The government has cancelled plans to test electronic voting in next May’s local elections, it was revealed today.
In a Cabinet Office consultation paper published in 2002, the government pledged to have e-voting fully in place by next year to allow ‘e-enabled’ general elections.
It was hoped that allowing people to cast their votes by text or through the internet would improve turnout and consequently political participation, as postal voting is believed to do.
Turnout did increase in this year’s general election – up two per cent to 61.3 per cent – and was accompanied by a 15 per cent rise in the number of postal voters.
However, a string of prosecutions for postal voting fraud have led to concerns about the security of the system, and with it the security of e-voting, which relies on PIN numbers sent via the post to identify individual voters.
E-voting was due to be used across all London boroughs in next May’s local elections, but in a parliamentary answer revealed today by the Conservatives, constitutional affairs minister Harriet Harman indicated that the idea had been scrapped.
“The government has decided not to invite applications from local authorities to conduct electronic voting pilots in the May 2006 local elections,” the answer on August 30th read.
A spokesman for the Department of Constitutional Affairs insisted this did not mean piloting e-voting in the future was being ruled out, saying that any future plans “will be taken forward at the appropriate time”.
But shadow constitutional affairs secretary Oliver Heald welcomed the decision as recognition of the Conservatives concerns about the government’s “reckless e-voting plans”.
The lack of an “adequate audit trail” in the process was “extremely worrying”, he said, while e-voting pilots in the past have been both expensive and failed to produce significant results.
He continued: “The government must retain the tried and trusted ballot box as the foundation of British democracy. Restoring public confidence in our electoral system is more important than spending taxpayers’ money on ‘Big Brother’ text messaging gimmicks.”
