British democracy could be undermined by moves to use electronic
voting in elections, warns a report.
The risks involved in swapping paper ballots for electronic versions
far outweigh any benefits they may have, says the Open Rights Group
report.
It based its conclusions on reports from observers who watched e-
voting trials in May's local elections.
The group called for a halt to e-voting until it is reliable, easy to
oversee and has proven its integrity.
Cost counting
Observers acting for the ORG scrutinised local elections in England
which tried out e-voting as well as Scottish elections using
electronic counting systems to tally votes.
What the observers saw led the ORG to express "serious concerns"
about e-voting and whether it should be used local and national
elections.
In England, e-voting systems using kiosks, laptops, touch screens and
mobile phones have been tried. In the 2007 elections internet voting,
telephone voting and electronic counting systems were tried.
The ORG's main objection was that e-voting was currently a "black
box" system which stopped voters seeing how their votes were recorded
or counted.
This, said the ORG, made oversight of elections "impossible" and left
them open to "error and fraud".
The report criticised the lack of a rigorous certification scheme to
ensure that the hardware and software used in e-voting schemes were
free from vulnerabilities and protected the integrity of the voting
system.
It also called for usability testing to ensure that those who e-
voting schemes were designed to serve - the elderly and housebound -
could use them easily.
The report said more work was also needed on the e-counting systems
used in the elections and said in some cases the new systems were
abandoned in favour of a manual count.
The counts by machine or hand sometimes produced very different
results, pointed out the report.
The problems with e-counting systems overturned the initial support
that many voting officers had for the new hardware, said the report.
The Group said it was a serious mistake to accept the conveniences of
e-voting while ignoring how they might undermine confidence in voting
as a whole.
In light of the problems it uncovered, the ORG said a halt should be
called to e-voting trials to ensure that their shortcomings are
addressed before they are more widely used.
The "significant lack of agreement" among computer scientists about
how secure and reliable voting is via the net or mobile led the group
to say: "considerable academic research and debate must be pursued
before further e-voting trials can be considered".
In response to the ORG report, the Ministry of Justice said: "We
welcome input to the debate on electoral pilot schemes, and electoral
modernisation in general.
"However, it is the Electoral Commission's statutory responsibility
to evaluate and report on electoral pilot schemes and we look forward
to the publication of their official reports in August, to which we
will respond."
