Advances in electronic direct democracy: Why not in UK?

[I&R ~ GB]

no-r...@news.admin.ch wrote:

You have received this news from www.news.admin.ch

*Electronic voting in the national **referendum **ballot March 2012

Bern, 16.12.2011 - On 16th December **for twelve counties** the
Government approved the use of electronic voting in the ballot timed for
11th march 2012**. About 122,000 voters will be able to vote by using
the Internet. Already, all of these twelve counties have run tests of
Internet voting.*

The Government (Bundesrat)

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-------------------------------------
Forwarded by courtesy of:
I&R ~ GB Citizens' Initiative and Referendum
Campaign for direct democracy in Britain
http://www.iniref.org/
*

[DVH]

"I&R ~ GB" <info...@OUTiniref.org> wrote in message
news:9l410b...@mid.uni-berlin.de...

> no-r...@news.admin.ch wrote:
>
> You have received this news from www.news.admin.ch
>
> *Electronic voting in the national **referendum **ballot March 2012
>
> Bern, 16.12.2011 - On 16th December **for twelve counties** the Government
> approved the use of electronic voting in the ballot timed for 11th march
> 2012**. About 122,000 voters will be able to vote by using the Internet.
> Already, all of these twelve counties have run tests of Internet voting.*
>

The Swiss administration is rumoured to be more honest and less corrupt than
its counterpart here.

Electronic voting is more likely to satisfy the will of the people.

[I&R ~ GB]

Bertram wrote:
> John,
>
> What advantage will electronic voting give?

Well Bertram, there are two components in the introductory part of our
question. The first and most important is why in UK, countries and
districts, do we not have the option to use direct democracy? I'll
mention only one reason. While the Localism Bill was "progressing" (the
term "running the gauntlet" would fit better) through parliament a small
but major advance in democracy was heavily attacked by local politicians
and commercial developers: So the Coalition's promise to enable citizens
to instigate a referendum on a local issue of their choice was thrown
out of the bill. Among elites, the political "class" and the wealthy
there is massive resistance to the introduction of effective democracy
in England.

That aside, to your point about e-voting.

In the recent Feltham by-election turnout was around 29 percent. More
people would vote if they could do so via cell phone or Internet. So far
the I&R ~ GB /iniref campaign has not made a recommendation about
e-voting in elections. The people / electorate should decide.

Iniref does recommend that e-voting could be used to collect endorsing
signatures for citizens' propositions in a system with
citizen-instigated referendum. There is usually no need for secrecy
here, and voters could check if their name had been used correctly or not.

> The current voting system is bad enough, but it is correctable.
> Voting/democracy, like justice, should be seen to be done i.e.
transparent.
> The public are excluded from the current count and you can’t see
inside a computer.
> A computer does what it is programmed to do, and there is no way the
public can see/verify how many sub-programs the system uses according to
pre-determined criteria.
> I made that comment to our Returning Officer after one count, they
stopped using computers in the system to compile the manual count results.
> As Stalin once said “He who has the vote has nothing, he who counts
the votes has everything” or words to that effect.
> If the current system count was done at the polling station, more of
the public could witness it, and it would knock hours off the time
needed to get the final result.
> The polling station results could be transmitted to a central hall
and shown on a screen for the candidates to watch.
> It could be relayed back so the public could verify their station
results.
> The count could start before the close of poll in a separate room or
partitioned area, anyone admissible, but they can’t come out until the
poll closes.
> From the two referendums I run, I could get the district results an
hour after the poll closed.
> It should be feasible to get the national result by two hours after
the poll closed.
> Accurate, verifiable results should be more important than speed, and
it would be a lot cheaper than the current system or electronic voting.
>
> Regards
> Bertram

Your experience and insights about elections are surely valuable. Let us
hope that they will be included in future debates on how to improve our
electoral systems!

Best,
John

[I&R ~ GB]

A useful resource about e-voting:

http://www.e-voting.cc/main

EXCERPT quote
Electoral Pilot Schemes 2000-2007

Since 2000, the Electoral Commission for the United Kingdom
(www.electoralcommission.org.uk)
encouraged local authorities in England to undertake pilot schemes that
test new methods of voting and voting arrangements at local government
elections which, if successful, might be adopted more widely. Between
2000 and 2007 there were six separate rounds of electoral pilot schemes.
Pilots have included advance voting, all-postal voting pilots,
multi-channel electronic voting and e-counting.

Electronic voting

The May 2007 elections saw five local authorities pilot a range of
e-voting solutions, including remote internet voting, telephone voting
and the provision of electronic polling stations enabling a ‘vote
anywhere’ environment on polling day. In broad terms, the remote
e-voting elements of the May 2007 pilot schemes proved successful and
facilitated voting, although there were some issues concerning
accessibility, public understanding of the pre-registration process and,
in at least one pilot area, technical problems in relation to telephone
voting. However, in common with the e-counting pilots, there was
insufficient time available to implement and plan the pilots, and the
quality assurance and testing was undertaken too late and lacked
sufficient depth.
UNQUOTE