The government is looking for suppliers to pilot electoral innovations such as electronic voting, as part of plans to modernise the electoral system and improve voter turnout.
The trials are expected to start next year and will cover remote and supervised e-voting – including an election management system to receive, process and store ballot information – and electronic counting technology.
The scheme will build on previous trials such as those run by 17 boroughs in the 2003 local elections. It also dovetails with Electoral Commission work on new provisions such as postal vote tracking and e-counting that were tested in May this year and incorporated into the Electoral Administration Act passed by Parliament last month.
‘We need to modernise the electoral system to make it more relevant and user friendly for voters,’ said a spokesman for the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA).
The four-year deals will cover pilots from 2007 to 2010. Local authorities will apply to take part once the contracts are signed in December, says the DCA.
Technologies needed for e-voting, such as authentication and document scanning, are not new, but the scale of a General Election and the requirement for absolute reliability is unparalleled, says Eric Woods, government practice director at analyst Ovum.
‘In principle there is nothing that is not used on a smaller scale in the commercial sector, but bringing it all together in practice in the electoral system is a different proposition,’ he said.
‘Public acceptance and ensuring that integrity is retained are crucial because the electoral process is about trust.’
The success of e-voting pilots will be down to matters beyond the control of IT, says Will Davies, senior research fellow at think-tank the Institute of Public Policy Research. For example, an authoritarian parent might choose to vote on behalf of family members, he says.
‘There are serious questions about innovation in voting systems that cannot be solved entirely by making the technology more secure or using encryption, as they are about what it means to vote at home,’ said Davies.
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