By Andy McCue, 5 May 2006 17:35
The system was developed by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) and Unisys and uses an electronic register, which contains details of all voters in Rushmoor.
When a person votes at the Shop 'n' Vote polling station, he or she is automatically marked on the register and the appropriate ballot paper printed for the relevant ward. The completed ballot paper is then put into a secure ballot box, as normal.
The system was introduced after low levels of voter turnout - just 30 to 35 per cent - at local elections in recent years. This year the new polling stations meant more than 1,250 citizens in Rushmoor cast their votes before the day of the election.
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'.