Watchdog calls for halt to e-voting pilots

It's time for the government to stop trialling electronic and telephone voting and set out an electoral modernisation strategy, the Electoral Commission has said.

The watchdog said that several years of pilots has taught the government much about voting via the internet and phones, but more trials are not needed.

"We have learnt a good deal from pilots over the past few years," said the commission's chief executive, Peter Wardle, in a statement. "But we do not see any merit in continuing with small-scale, piecemeal piloting where similar innovations are explored each year without sufficient planning and implementation time, and in the absence of any clear direction, or likelihood of new insights."

The commission has called for e-voting pilots to be halted until an individual voter registration system is implemented and for electronic counting trials to be halted until better buying and testing methods are developed. It said the government must set out a strategy for modernising voting with a focus on security.

"We continue to believe that the security of our electoral process needs to be strengthened through a system of individual registration," Wardle said.

The report also advised authorities to allow a minimum of six months to implement such electronic techniques, and to ensure substantial testing happens before polling day.

Internet and telephone voting have been tested in polling stations in Rushmoor, Sheffield, Shrewsbury and Atcham, South Bucks and Swindon. Electronic counting trials were held in Dover, South Bucks, Breckland, Stratford-upon-Avon and Warwick - but technology troubles in the latter three lead authorities to use a manual count instead.

Despite the call by the watchdog, Swindon deputy returning officer Alan Winchcombe told the BBC he hoped electronic voting continued: "Everybody does things on the internet or by telephone these days and if we don't bring the voting process into the modern age, the younger population in Swindon won't bother to vote."

Indeed, as IT PRO previously reported, the May 2007 e-vote got mixed results from bodies such as the Open Rights Group (ORG) and suppliers.

The ORG praised the commission's call for government direction about the technology, but said the report failed to look into the deeper problems with computerised elections.

"We're pleased that the commission has recognised the desperate need for public debate about the role technology might play in our electoral system," the digital and civil liberties campaigning group said in a statement. "We're also satisfied that the detail of the commission's reports on pilots in Bedford, Rushmoor, Sheffield, Shrewsbury, South Bucks, Stratford and Swindon confirm the experiences of our own election monitoring teams. But we're disappointed that the fundamental challenges in using computers for elections have not been fully recognised by the report."

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