The government wants to introduce e-voting, despite flaws in the system.
Last month, when first Richard and Judy, and then Blue Peter, were forced to admit to having rigged their competition phone-ins, the Department for Constitutional Affairs must have been more than a little anxious. Not because these national treasures form any part of the country's glorious unwritten constitution, but because the DCA had just announced four telephone voting initiatives - in Sheffield, Shrewsbury, Swindon and South Buckinghamshire - under a wider pilot scheme for electronic voting at next month's local elections.
When I think about central government's passion for introducing electronic voting (the "modernisation" process is continuing despite grave concerns raised by the Electoral Commission in 2003), I often wonder about its vision of the future. The spin on these pilots has been masterful. In 2003, it was suggested that the next general election would be conducted electronically, ensuring full press attention. This time around, the pilot projects have been more low-key, letting the vagaries of electoral law and the complex cryptography deployed to uphold it in computerised systems do their thing and keep the media at arm's length. None the less, I am convinced that lurking inside the head of some special adviser somewhere in Westminster is the vision of Gordon Brown and David Cameron, sweating and shifting uncomfortably under the glare of studio lights, while all around the country "the viewers decide".
Back when the DCA announced the pilot projects in October, this column explained why e-voting is a technically difficult problem. To recap - in an election, your identity cannot be associated with your vote without your privacy being breached. Yet somehow, electronic voting mechanisms must be certain that you actually are entitled to vote.
A further complication is that the electorate must be able to understand how this problem is solved. Once we've marked our ballot papers and dropped them in the ballot box, it is fairly easy for us to comprehend that that box will be watched to ensure it remains closed until such time as it is opened for counting, at which point representatives from all the major candidates will be there to watch the count.
Some years ago, I had the opportunity to interview a man who organised electoral observation missions to emerging democracies, mostly in Africa. He told me that the main reason for the international missions being there was so that, when one side won, the other side didn't immediately cry foul and revolt. Everyone needed to understand that the process was free and fair, so that they could accept the result. With electronic voting, this understanding is limited to a cryptographic elite - the best of whom know that, though the government continues to push for e-voting to be introduced into our system of democracy, its problems have not yet been solved.
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