The Select Committee for Scottish Affairs has admitted that it remains
far from convinced at eVoting, after the problems with last year’s Scottish elections.
A highly publicised problem with an
excel spreadsheet contributed to the Affairs Committee’s doubts, but they believes that the tried-and-tested manual system that has been in place for years is more suitable for politics.
“There has been a severe loss of confidence in e-counting,” the committee found.
“The experience of its use in the Scottish Parliament and local government elections revealed a fundamental lack of transparency.
“The checks and balances of a manual system must be retained. Candidates and observers must have access to ballot papers in order to ensure that procedures are followed correctly and that recounts can be asked for.
“Until these problems are resolved, we do not support the use of e-counting for future elections.”
However, although the Secretary of State for Scotland ‘has given an undertaking that e-counting will not be used in the next Scottish Parliament elections’ the report does point out that eVoting has been a success elsewhere.
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20-05-2008
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