COMMENT: E-voting - surrendering more than tradition?

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 1 May 2003 at 16:23

Swindon votes 'yes' to e-voting, but is convenience voting the panacea for voter apathy?

Swindon, one of the districts trialling e-voting during this week's local elections, has turned to the Net as its ballot of choice.

In the biggest shake up of the electoral process for 150 years, Swindon residents have been given the opportunity to cast their votes not only in the traditional way, but also by post, public kiosk, telephone, interactive digital TV and over the Internet.

Although the results polling booths won't be in until tomorrow, the e-votes have already been totted up. With a voting population of 139,000, 163 cast their votes at public kiosks, 339 through interactive television, 2,792 over the telephone and 6,895 over the Internet.

Not earth-shattering figures on the face of it. But John Ellis, of the Athena Consortium - the company behind e-voting - said that a 35 per cent turnout for Swindon would be considered good. So having gained a 7.5 per cent head start before the paper votes are counted is a great initiation.

'E-voting is only partially about the issue of turnout,' said Ellis. 'The Government sees this as a coin with two sides: to provide more opportunities for people to vote, and to make them want to vote. It's the horse to water analogy. With e-voting, we've brought it to water.'

Making the animal drink is a whole different problem. Ellis said that e-voting provides opportunities for people to vote who are out of the country, find it difficult to get out or who simply don't fancy walking to the polling booth on a dark and rainy evening.

But whether e-voting will suddenly engage or cut off vast swathes of the population is unclear. Ellis had plenty of anecdotal evidence that elderly folk are 'no slouches' when it comes to technology - to the point that a 93-year-old had voted electronically and that the first online experience of a 78-year-old Stroud couple was voting. But I can offer my own anecdotes to balance this - of grandparents that forget to take their fingers from the keyboard before attempting the next letter, let alone control a mouse.

Besides, such a glut of channels to vote is not necessarily a good thing. Should voting be made as easy and convenient as possible? Should the very elderly be voting when 17-year-olds are excluded?

Providing such an excess of opportunities is a substantial security risk. Ellis says the e-voting system itself is rigorously secured, audited and has undergone extensive penetration testing. But the real security risk here is posed by electoral candidates themselves.

They now have before them the unique opportunity of peddling their wares door to door around the borough and coercing little old ladies to cast their votes while they look over their shoulder. Perhaps in the name of helping them use these new systems. Who would ever know?

We all whoop and holler about e-voting being the dawn of a new era for interactive democracy. But there are valid arguments against e-voting that simply have not been heard. And in this respect we are jumping on technology to push democracy, quite blindly, into the unknown.