The Open Rights Group published a report on Wednesday that includes scathing criticisms of the way e-voting and e-counting proceeded at a number of sites during the local government elections last month.
The Open Rights Group (ORG) said it cannot express confidence in the results declared in the areas observed, and remains opposed to the introduction of e-voting and e-counting in the UK.
The group — a non-governmental organisation that deals with information management and privacy issues — was given accredited observer status at the elections by the Electoral Commission. It placed observers at sites in England and Scotland to record how the pilots performed.
The report says there is an underlying problem with e-voting being a "black-box system" where the mechanisms for recording and tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter. This makes public scrutiny impossible and leaves statutory elections open to error and fraud.
In England the problems were compounded by the fact that authorities had just three months to procure and implement the relevant systems, which use technologies that are considered immature. Inadequate attention was given to systems design, systems access and audit trails, with inappropriate hardware and software that was insufficiently secured and not subjected to reasonable checks.
On election day, ORG observed problems with e-voting, including unreliable laptops at polling stations in Swindon, incorrect displays and problems with error messages in Rushmoor, and trouble casting votes in Sheffield. Cryptographic receipts were generally poorly designed and difficult for voters to use.
Similarly, problems became apparent in e-counting, including scanner malfunctions and software errors. Candidates and agents reported that they received less information than expected and felt the process was opaque, with counts removed to distant locations. Some returning officers commented that they did not know what was happening.
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The ORG said that throughout the electoral process information was not provided in an open and timely manner, and that it experienced obstruction from some authorities and government departments when seeking information.
It concludes that returning officers were poorly equipped to interpret and act on the technical aspects of the process, and often displayed a lax attitude towards problems that arose. This sometimes made them seem more interested in declaring any result rather than in ensuring it was correct.
The concerns have been intensified by the lack of audit trails in many cases. A reluctance to perform manual counts to confirm the results means there is no meaningful way to verify that e-counting has been accurate, the report says.
Jason Kitcat, e-voting co-ordinator for the ORG, said at the launch that a number of problems became apparent.
"The systems were slower than the manual count in most cases, they were expensive, there was too much trust in the vendors, not enough auditability, a lot of error messages that could not be explained and in some cases it was unusable," he said. "The ORG feels unable to verify any of the results."
The report claims that, as things stand, e-voting and e-counting pose a risk to democracy in the UK, far outweighing any of the benefits the systems might potentially offer. It recommends that no more trials take place until there has been a step change in their reliability, integrity and transparency, and that there needs to be a consensus among technical experts that the problems will not recur.
It acknowledges, however, that trials may well continue, and makes a number of recommendations for improved practice. These include:
- providing at least a year for procuring and implementing the technology;
- setting up an independent technology-certification process;
- providing more support to local authorities in using specialist systems;
- allowing candidates, agents and observers to inspect votes accepted by systems; and
- providing for a manual recount of a sample of e-counted votes.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, which sponsored the pilots, said it "welcomes the input to the debate", but that it was waiting for the Electoral Commission's report, to be published in August, before making a detailed response.
"These official evaluations will play an important role in informing future government policy on electoral modernisation," the spokesperson said. "We have welcomed the role of observers in these elections and their contribution to the Electoral Commission's evaluation and election review work.
"Pilot schemes are an opportunity to learn lessons. If there are ways in which these processes can be improved for the future, we will take them into account in considering any next steps."
