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By Sarah Left, 17 October 1999 00:20

NEWS The people of London will pioneer automated elections in Britain during the mayoral election on 4 May 2000. The capital's five million voters will be issued with scannable ballot papers that will be processed in 14 UK centres. DRS Data and Research Services, based in Milton Keynes, has won the contract to supply and scan the ballots. The system will be based on their own optical mark reading technology - the same technology used in many multiple-choice exam sheets. No value for the contract has been disclosed. The Department for Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) says the move is necessary because of the complicated nature of the mayoral election. It will be the first election in Britain to use the Supplementary Vote system, where voters tick both a first and second choice for mayor. The director of DRS Data and Research Services, Simon Day, says the automated system will save considerable time and effort. The DETR concurs, estimating that manual counting of the votes would take at least three days. Under the automated count, the department expects a result the next morning. "We do think there will be a net saving," said a DETR spokeswoman. "We won't need all the personnel we do for a manual count." Day insisted that the UK can take the concept of electronic voting a lot further. "Many things are meant by electronic voting. This is automated counting, but the rest of the physical voting system will be the same as before." To test the system before the election, a trial vote is scheduled to take place in London early next year and will involve up to half a million ballot papers.