The Open Rights Group has criticised the government for standing by its plans to continue pilots for electronic voting and counting in England and Wales.
This comes the day after the government rejected the Electoral Commission's recommendation that it should pull back from testing the technology in elections until a full electoral modernisation framework has been developed.
The Open Rights Group (ORG), a digital rights advocacy group, issued a statement on Tuesday stating its "deep concern" at the government's response to an Electoral Commission report on the May 2007 e-voting and e-counting pilots. ORG observers were accredited by the Electoral Commission to monitor the pilots — and observed serious failings in the process.
The group said the government has ignored the fundamental failings observed in trials so far. This includes analysis by computer security experts that the technology is not yet sufficiently robust, and that remote voting systems threaten privacy, potentially allowing third parties to coerce and influence voters.
ORG also took issue with the government's claim that the pilots ensured electors were not disenfranchised and retained their option of a paper ballot. It said the observers saw evidence to the contrary, including some voters being turned away from polling stations when they found themselves unable to vote by telephone or online.
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Becky Hogge, ORG's executive director, said: "We are told that e-voting will increase participation, yet the pilots tell a story of voter turnout increased marginally, if at all. The risks posed to our democracy by the introduction of e-voting outweigh these unproven benefits considerably."
"Every voter expects their vote to count, and to count once. Until there is consensus that that expectation can be met, remote electronic voting should be reserved for the purposes for which it is fit — naming cats on Blue Peter and voting on the X Factor."
