Senior reporter
With so many politicians tweeting and posting videos on YouTube to gain votes, it seems ironic that the more-media savvy general public still have to use an archaic voting system.
Yesterday’s general election made this all too clear. Hailed as the UK’s first ‘digital election’, the evening ended in chaos as hundreds of voters were locked out of polling stations when the ballot boxes closed.
Some areas ran out of ballot papers while others had to call police to turn crowds away. All three main parties condemned the situation which was described by the chair of the Electoral Commission, Jenny Watson, as ‘Victorian’.
‘It is a cause for serious concern that many people who wanted to vote were unable to do so by 10pm when polls closed,’ the Electoral Commision said in a statement. ‘There should have been sufficient resources allocated to ensure that everyone who wished to vote was able to do so.’
Many of the people waiting outside the polling stations used their phones to update social media sites on what was happening. Undoubtedly, a large number were also part of the new generation of first-time voters, enthused by television leader’s debates and feeling far more engaged with the electoral process than ever before.
But in an age of social-media, could an electronic voting process have prevented the last-minute chaos? According to a recent survey more than three quarters of the general public would vote on the internet if they could, up more than 10 per cent on last night’s estimated 65 per cent turn out.
Arguably walking to a polling station every five years or so isn’t a huge price to pay for democracy. However, the dispararity between doing this and the high-tech methods used on the campaign trail, have raised some questions that need to be addressed by the future government.
The very nature of a “pencil and paper” manual voting system makes it labour intensive to vote and process the votes. This makes it very hard for someone to cheat. Sure you can slip in the odd vote here or there but you can’t change the value by thousands. By contrast it’s *very easy* to hack a digital election, forge electronic votes and rig a counting system where you can’t see whats going on. There a numerous cases of serious electoral fraud using ‘modern’ electronic voting systems.
Running out of papers has nothing to do with manual vs electronic and with 15 hours to get to the polling station people who leave it to the last 10 minutes have whats comming to them.
I vote NO for electronic voting.
The paper voting on clear to read sheet with check boxes that can be easily interpreted as the benefits of:
* allowing anyone to vote
* being able validate those votes at any time and publicly
Miss use of voting systems – paper or electronic – are anywhere where there is miss use of power. And the little effort of providing enough paper and more booths should be worth the effort of clarity.
Regards from Germany.
Andreas
E-voting from has more disadvantages than even postal voting – voters are open to coercion, identity verification is fraught, data transmission and security is complex and expensive, and establishing a checkable, 100% anonymous audit trail might just be achievable but would not be trusted by the electorate. Pencil, paper, a private booth at a pubic polling station address most of the above technical issues. Better planning by returning officers and voters alike would solve the problems experienced yesterday.
Archaic to say the least.
Why are we still in the 19th century with some of our methods and procedures. How are we going to keep ahead in this modern “democratic” and progressive world if we cant get this simple problem resolved.
Perhaps we should vote for policies not parties.
I honestly think the days of three party politics have ended.
I didn’t think that ¾ of the public had access to the Internet yet. Anyway, what is wrong with a choice? – if they can guarantee security and efficiency for the Internet, add it by all means.
As for the timed closure, a time has to be set, maybe arrange for the place so stay open “x” hrs after the door closing time. (The same issue applies to flight times which are now no such thing, the time advertised should be the check-in closure time).
But too right, walking to a polling station (well distributed?) in plenty of time and Q-ing a bit if you expect to go in the evening should not be such a price .. Whatever time you say, some will push it to the end . .
One place said, they had insufficient voting papers – which seems weird as the numbers for each Station should be well known.
There were just three of us present at 7am for the opening locally, two on their way to work.
(If some of these voters knew they would have been at work/other difficulty, they could have asked for a postal vote, that is much easier these days. The current theme of Britain is “always someone else’s fault”, when we have had this election lot in our face for weeks. ..)
An electronic system is all well and good, but it has been shown numerous times that no matter how good you think the electronic security is, someone can and will crack it.
The electronic systems would surely (as others have said) be far more open to the possibility of corruption/fraud than the current, albeit archaic paper system we have.
I also think that is is niaive of certain commentators to suggest that people who couldn’t get in time should have had a postal vote. There are lots of people who work long hours, or shifts, who have little forward plan of thier working hours as they are expected to be flexible. There is also an element of the feeling that more young/first time voters turned out than ever before. It is entirely reasonable in the modern age that they would have expected to turn up and it take no more than a couple of minutes, and not have to queue for hours to vote, so left it until the last minute due to inexperience.
While I appreciate that there has to be a finite time limit and closure to the voting, it is unbelievable to find that people who had made the effort to turn out and vote (no matter what the time) were turned away.
Government and ‘e’ anything is very similar to electricity and water, they don’t mix without nasty things happening!
Need I say more…….
Here in Brazil we have eletronic elections, but not through the internet. We use the same procedure, with polling stations and ID checking (voting is a citizen obligation here) but using “eletronic boxes”, to avoid cheating. So, we usually have the results in the late night of the same day elections finished. The system is being used for more than a decade. WHen I lived in US, from 97 to 2001, north americans still payded annual taxes using paper, while I did my Brazilian taxes through the internet, from there. Anyway, I think there is room for improvement using the available technologies.
Why not have a mix where a paper is issued and then scanned. A material backup then exists for records but the results will be obtained within minutes of the doors closing.
There could also be a first,second and third choice so that if a hung parliament results from the first choice, the second choice, which must be a different party, is counted. This would overcome tactical voting to an extent.
Finally if one looks at the number of votes per party over the past elections, proportional representation would have resulted in a hung parliament every time – perhaps it is time to do what the voters are voting for and erect the gallows and hang the lot!
Picking up on Andy’s comment above, what about the polling card we are all sent doubling as a voting slip? You mark your “X” on the card and take it to your nearest post office etc, where there is a lotto machine. The machine scans your card/vote (as it does a lottery ticket) and also your personal bar code.
The system knows you’ve voted (so no voting twice) and once all votes are collected, the result is instantaneous.
You need to balance the possibility (and therefore the cost of counteracting) electronic fraud with the actual condition of mis-counted votes- I wonder what the margin of error is on an national ballot?