During this years local elections I acted as an observer on behalf of the Open Rights Group. As part of the process of producing the report I have kept my observations under my hat up until now. Well the report has been published and is available to download. As Jason the co-ordinator for our efforts has already conceded, I will happily admit we went into the process with a view. That view was that given all the problems both theoretical and practically demonstrated in other countries, with the safety and security of electronic voting now was not the time to try it out on the British electorate.
The report shows that as foreseen the inadequate planning and preparation lead to many situations where a system designed to prevent human error and provide efficiency gains, in the most part had the opposite effect.
Please, download the report, please, please read it. If you have an opinion on what it says, write your own blog entry, write and article for the magazine or newspaper you contribute to (if it is at all relevant), pen a letter to your MP, MSP or Councillor (the omission of AM is due to as far as I know the Welsh avoiding having to deal with this problem, this time round). What I really don't want is for you to do nothing, if the right to vote, have your vote counted, have your vote kept confidential and the principle that election fixing is a bad thing are all important to you than please keep the word alive that the trials just conducted in e-voting and e-counting were not a success by any measure.
Edit While I have been writing this it has been pointed out that El Reg, The Mail, Press Association, The Grauniad, Channel 4 all have the story, in these days of citizen journalism don't let the old school media keep the lead ;-)
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