E-voting 'must be dropped'

The Conservative Party has called for the government to drop any idea of e-voting in future elections

Oliver Heald MP , the shadow secretary of state for constitutional affairs, issued a statement with the demand on 6 September, 2005. This followed news that the government is not yet planning for another round of e-voting pilots.

In response to a parliamentary question from Heald in late August, Harriet Harman, minister at the Department for Constitutional Affairs, said the government has now decided against inviting councils to run e-voting pilots in the May 2006 local elections.

Heald said the Conservatives welcome the cancellation of the plan, and that they consider e-voting to be vulnerable to fraud.

"Remote electronic voting is even more vulnerable than all postal voting; not only are the Internet and text messaging insecure, but PIN numbers must still be sent by post to voters, and there is no way of confidently identifying that an electronic vote is being cast by the eligible voter," he said.

"This lack of an adequate audit trail is extremely worrying in the light of the risk of fraud already exposed with all postal voting.

"Past e-voting pilots in local elections have proved expensive and not delivered any significant increase in turnout. The government must retain the tried and trusted ballot box as the foundation of British democracy. Restoring public confidence in our electoral system is more important than spending taxpayers' money on 'Big Brother' text-messaging gimmicks."

The Conservatives said the statement refers to voting by Internet, text message or telephone, and does not refer to voting machines in a polling station or electronic counting of paper ballots.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister shelved plans to support e-voting trials late in 2004, following a report from the Electoral Commission saying it would not support them.

Following the general election in May, responsibility was passed to the Department for Constitutional Affairs. It is committed to publishing an Electoral Administration Bill in the near future which will aim to find a balance between widening access and providing security.

A DCA spokesperson said: "The Government believes that the time is not yet right to take forward the piloting of e-voting. We are not ruling out piloting e-voting in the future and any future plans will be taken forward at the appropriate time."