Month: January 2007

• Florida's new Governor Crist to replace touch-screen machines
  The Republican Governor of Florida looks like he will replace expensive touch-screens with optical vote scanners in a bid to clean up Florida's tarnished elections record. See below for an example… (Thanks to Rebecca Mercuri for the top)

• Why So Many Undervotes in Sarasota?
  Ed Felten has started a series of entries on his excellent blog about why ES&S iVotronic using areas had an undervote rate of 14% (compared to 2.5% for absentee voters). Sarasota, Florida is where 18,412 voters cast votes in other contest but not the congressional race. This is the kind of problem Gov Crist is trying to avoid.

• Committe on Standards in Public Life: Review of The Electoral Commission
  With the announcement of the e-voting pilots I haven't had time to digest this fully, but this looks to be a very useful and important contribution to electoral reform in the UK.

Today the government has announced the details of the May 2007 e-voting pilots. This is two months later than the timetable outlined in the Department for Constitutional Affair's prospectus document. Strangely the prospectus document for these pilots, with that timetable, has gone offline – so here's a copy for you to download.

Fewer pilots than before
In 2003 there were 14 authorities trialling remote e-voting and 4 using kiosks. This year there will be 5 authorities using remote e-voting and 6 doing e-counting. I see none using kiosk (DRE) type machines.

Same old turnout rubbish
Minister Bridget Prentice trotted out this ripe quote:

“More and more people, and particularly young people, are using the internet everyday. We need to see if we can use this to encourage people even more to participate in the democratic process.”

These statements have no basis in facts. 2003 pilots saw turnout drop, see my previous response to Prentice's soundbites here.

Press release
Additional information [PDF]
Lord Falconer's Written Statement

Learn more about e-voting at these great Open Rights Group events, all free!

Since the announcement of the 2007 e-voting pilots I've been working hard with many other people to ensure we are ready for whatever the pilots throw at voters. Mysteriously but wonderfully it turned out that we were all members of the Open Rights Group, an excellent campaigning organisation whose creation was very long overdue in the UK.

So under the friendly Open Rights Group umbrella we've organised three excellent, free e-voting events in February. There's a screening of “Hacking Democracy” with panel discussion, an activists' workshop and a great evening event with some of the best e-voting experts around. The events will all be at University College London. I'm looking forward to seeing many new and old faces there!

Go see the full details on the ORG blog

Right idea Bridget…

Imagine that instead of referring to postal voting our Elections Minister, Bridget Prentice was referring to electronic voting:

“Democracy is not only about having the choice to vote but also about having confidence in the integrity of the system […] These [postal voting] measures will improve security and introduce deterrents against fraud so that people have confidence that their vote will be cast and counted fairly.” (BBC News Online)

I would agree that confidence in the integrity of our elections is much more important than choice. So why the rush for e-voting?

US e-voting certifiers Ciber Labs barred

The film Hacking Democracy raised some serious doubts about the quality and independence of Ciber's testing of e-voting systems. The New York Times reports that the Federal Election Assistance Commission has temporarily barred Ciber from approving new machines since summer 2006. Disturbingly this news has only just emerged with details that Ciber's quality control and documentation was lacking.

Council of Europe meeting to review e-voting developments

I've not had a chance to read all the presentations but a fine bunch of European civil servants presented their countries' status regarding e-voting. The presentations are all online so should make interesting reading, the UK slides just confirm their dedication to the cause of pushing e-voting.