The death of on-line voting
On-line voting in Local Elections may well be scrapped
Government in this country can give one the right hump!. The latest piece of policy concerns E-government and E-voting. Why is this such an issue? Well in the last election turnout was somewhat low not only in the general election but in the more recent local elections. And what is our government going to do about it, stop E-voting.
The Electoral Commission has published a review (2nd August 2007) criticising the e-counting and e-voting pilots at the 2007 local elections. Commission chief executive Peter Wardle said: "We have learnt a good deal from pilots over the past few years. 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.
Small scale ? – This from 2003 - The Local Government Finance (England) Special Grant Report (No. 121) on Invest to Save Budget Round 5 Projects, Local E-Government Programme and E-Voting report provides 18 local authorities with about £18.3 million of funding to support the enhanced programme of e-voting pilots that took place during this May's local elections.
In total, 59 local authorities, covering more than 6.4 million voters, held electoral pilot schemes; making it the biggest ever test of national e-voting technology. E-voting pilots included digital television, internet, touch-tone telephone, text messaging and, in the counting of votes, e-counting machines and all-postal ballots. If this is small scale I’d hate to think what might happen and what it would cost if they did it on a grand scale!
The schemes were aimed at modernising and reinvigorating the electoral process, making it easier for people to vote. As the programme develops, they say “we wish to see widespread e-enabled elections to local authorities and the devolved administrations. The ultimate objective is to hold an e-enabled general election at some time after 2006.”
Local Government Online set aside £10 million in each year (2002 to 2005) for e-voting. In 2004, the North West E-Government Group (Just one of 8 Regions) allocated £1m to support for e-voting quality assurance alongside the £12m allocation for 2005 e-voting pilots. So having spent £58.3m and involved 6.4 million people in a “small scale” operation the Electoral Commission is proposing scrapping E-voting. This is much to the disgust of Swindon. Deputy returning officer Alan Winchcombe said that while it may have failed elsewhere, it worked in Swindon. "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," he said. "That's what they're telling us, they won't go to one polling station on one day to do it, they need to have some choice and flexibility. "We had some people voting at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning because it suited their lifestyle."
Come on guys get into the 21st century, if you want people to be involved in local and central politics and cast their votes make it easy for them to do so. Standing around polling station on a cold night, possibly raining is not the ticket. In this day and age where everything can be performed for home from shopping to watching a movie surly casting a vote, which after all is only putting a cross on a piece of paper, should be done on-line and goodness only knows when we can all do it maybe the bill for elections will be radically reduced.