29 June 2007
A report launched this week warns that electronic voting my cause harm to British democracy.
The report, conducted by the Open Rights Group says that the risks involved in swapping paper ballots for electronic versions far outweigh any benefits they may have. It based its conclusions on reports from observers who watched e-voting trials in May's local elections.
In its report, the group requested that the e-voting system be halted until it is reliable, easy to oversee and has proven its integrity.
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 Open Rights Group's main objection was that e-voting was currently a "black box" system which stopped voters seeing how their votes were recorded or counted. Without this anonymity the Open Rights Group said e-voting 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.
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