New research shows that text message and internet voting could encourage greater voter turn out. According to a survey carried out by Populus and the mobile phone marketing company i-movo, more than a third of the British electorate would be more likely to vote in an election if they could do so using their mobile phone. More than half of those aged 25 to 34 would be more likely to vote if they could send text messages.

Other research carried out by HI Europe Harris revealed that, of the 2,000 adults interviewed, two-thirds of adults would be willing to use the internet to vote in the general election. The survey found that one in four people would vote online if they could.

New media voting raises questions of credibility and fraud. Research by Mori for the IT consultancy Detica, people believed that introducing even more methods of voting, such as text messaging, e-mail, interactive TV or internet would make election fraud easier to commit and would not encourage more people to vote. Mori interviewed 963 adults across Britain, half of whom believed that new voting methods would make electoral fraud easier to commit.

In contrast, Consult Hyperion maintains that digital voting methods could save a lot of money and that the chances of fraud would be actually minimal. According to Hyperion by 2009 phones will be much more secure than the current models, and that voting websites will have more sophisticated security systems such as ID cards and PIN verification systems.