Government told to stop to e-voting trials

Electoral Commission says security must be improved

The Electoral Commission says e-voting needs more work before it can replace traditional methods

The Electoral Commission has called for an end to e-voting pilot schemes until security is improved.

The commission has advised the Ministry of Justice to halt live tests of phone and web-based voting until a system can be created to register voters on an individual basis.

Electronic vote-counting technology needs further improvements to its implementation and security, while advance voting schemes do not require any more trials, the government was told.

Peter Wardle, chief executive of the commission, says that recent tests were informative but have served their purpose.

'We do not see any merit in continuing with small-scale, piecemeal piloting where similar innovations are explored each year without sufficient planning and implementation time, and in the absence of any clear direction, or likelihood of new insights,' he said.

'We welcome the recent government green paper on constitutional reform, and we believe this needs to be supported by a clear plan for modernising elections.'

During May's local elections, pilot schemes were run by 13 local authorities. Electronic counting trials in Warwick, Breckland and Stratford-upon-Avon were abandoned after technical difficulties.