England and e-voting

["Margit Johansson" <margitjo@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/5F84231E45D876B180257391005664F8?OpenDocument

Government rejects retreat on e-voting
12 November 2007

The government has dismissed the Electoral Commission's call to pull
back from e-voting

The government has rejected the Commission's view that no further
e-voting pilots should take place until the government has a
comprehensive electoral modernisation framework covering the role of
e-voting.

It has turned down a number of proposals made by the Commission
following the pilots that took place during May 2007.

Election counting took place in Breckland, Dover, South Bucks,
Stratford-on-Avon and Warwick. But problems in three of these areas
resulted in the e-count being abandoned in favour of a traditional
manual count. Problems with the collation of scanned vote papers also
affected elections in Scotland.

In a response published by the Ministry of Justice on 12 November
2007, the government said that piloting was an "incremental and
cautious process" to decide what works and what does not. "We believe
that further pilots will be necessary to test capacity and scalability
issues for e-voting solutions if this is to be pursued," said the
government.

It also refused to accept the Commission's view that the level of risk
placed on the availability and integrity of the electoral process by
the pilots was unacceptable. It acknowledged that there were some
operational problems around access to e-voting but stressed that all
pilots retained the option of a paper ballot.

The Commission has made repeated calls for the government to publish
an electoral modernisation strategy to ensure that the benefits of
piloting are maximised. But the government also dismissed this
suggestion, insisting that the pilots' prospectus, which was published
in October 2006 in conjunction with the Commission, set out the
strategic fit of the pilots programme, as well as the drivers and
potential benefits of e-voting.

The government was equally defensive in response to another proposal
to set up a central process to ensure that tested and approved
e-voting solutions could be selected by local authorities.
It said: "The government believes that the current framework provides
local authorities with a sound basis from which to make choices about
working with suppliers, in the context of pilots and development of
processes."

However, it accepted that if e-voting did progress beyond pilots then
accreditation or certification of systems could be desirable.

The government also found fault with the Commission's belief that the
piloting process had largely achieved its aims for e-counting, and
that many lessons around e-counting had already been learned.

Describing this view as premature, the government said it needed more
information about the use of "proprietary machines, off-the-shelf
solutions, auto-adjudication of ballots and the use of e-counting at
different types of elections".

A spokesperson for the Electoral Commission told GC News: "We're
disappointed that the government may still seek to implement these
measures (e-voting pilots) in the absence of a comprehensive electoral
modernisation strategy.

"We know the government has taken on board some of our
recommendations, for example, that there should be a longer time
period for testing and planning, and a commitment to a public
consultation on the role of e-voting, and we look forward to working
with them in these areas."