By Andy McCue, 5 May 2006 17:35
The government ditched the e-voting trials originally planned for this week's local council elections because of fears over security. But that hasn't stopped one borough trialling new technologies to encourage higher voter turnout, prevent fraud and generally make the process more convenient and easier to use for citizens.
Here you can see one of the Shop 'n' Vote polling stations set up by Rushmoor Borough Council in Hampshire, in shopping centres in and around the army garrison in Aldershot.
The polling stations were aimed at increasing voter turnout by giving citizens the option of voting while they did their shopping in the days leading up to the official ballot day on 4 May.
Photo credit: Unisys/Rushmoor Borough Council
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1. Graham Coles
Cut fraud with e-voting? Stop kidding people!
Little bit of a contradiction there. I trust that rather than just publishing pictures of a polling booth someone will dig a little deeper and expose the systems behind it.
To accept electronic voting without any consideration of how the vote is supposed to be registered just shows how gullible people are. This could have been a spoof tv idea for all anyone knows.
Who is to say the votes aren’t being changed between the booth and the count? How secure are the systems being used? Are they patched? Are they running windows, possibly with loads of spyware present altering the votes?
I know how the procedure for voting by a proper legitimate ballot because it's open and simple; how many people who used these booths even have the semblance of a clue as to how their votes are supposedly being recorded. Have Rushmoor council published the software used for security review or are they keeping it secret?
e-Voting is far more likely to be fraudulent than the ballot box if for no other reason that nobody can see it working. Any system kept that secret can do anything it wants without anyone knowing about it. Whatever happened to the promise of 'Open Government'.