GLA goes ahead with e-voting tender

The Greater London Authority (GLA) is set to launch the tendering process for an electronic voting system before it has been given the go ahead from the Electoral Commission.

The electronic vote counting raised concerns in the last mayoral race in 2008 from both civil liberties groups, the Returning Officer for Greater London and the Electoral Commission. As a result, the GLA was asked to conduct an analysis to decide whether the electronic process was acceptable.

It reported back to the commission in June, saying that although manual counting was the cheaper option, it favoured the electronic process for its speed.

However, even though the Electoral Commission has yet to officially respond to its report, Leo Boland, chief executive of London City Hall, said at a meeting last week they were going to go ahead with the tendering process regardless.

A spokesperson from the Electoral Commission told IT PRO: "We will be reporting on this by the end of September 2009 but up until then it would not be appropriate for us to make any other comment."

We also contacted the GLA for comment but it had not responded to our request for comment at the time of publication.