Kiosk voting - 35.1 percent
Internet voting - 23.9 percent
Postal voting 23.3 percent
Telephone - 17.6 percent
Verulam:
Kiosk voting - 35.3 percent
Internet voting - 28.1 percent
Telephone voting - 27.7 percent
Postal voting - 8.9 percent
Lovelady said it was especially significant that around 55 percent of those who voted in Verulam chose to do so by Internet or Telephone. "This shows that many people prefer to vote remotely, rather than going along to a polling booth. If you give people a wider range of different ways of voting, then you will maintain or increase the number of people voting," Lovelady said. Did E-voting get more people voting?
It doesn't appear, though, that the chance to take part in e-voting persuaded many more people to take part in the local election. At 38.9 percent, the turnout in Verulam was significantly higher than in Sopwell, where only 23.27 percent of constituents voted. The overall voter turnout in the whole of St Albans was 38.22 percent. It is very difficult to draw clear conclusions on the effectiveness of e-voting at this stage, though. By extending the voting period to 48 hours, including a Saturday, and placing an e-voting kiosk at a local supermarket, the trial organisers were making several significant changes to the way the election was held. Lovelady said that it wasn't possible to say that more people voted in Sopwell -- where voter turnout is traditionally lower than average -- and Verulam. "We didn't have the polls open on 2 May, and if we had I think we would have got a higher turnout in those two wards," said Lovelady. Political parties generally plan their electoral campaign to peak on voting day, so the voters in Sopwell and Verulam might not have been exposed to the same level of campaigning. Lovelady believes that more testing should now be done into e-voting, and he hopes the government will consider extending the St Albans method to other elections. St Albans council worked with Oracle and BT to design and run the e-voting project.
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