British E-Voting Pilots Announced 166
rimberg writes "The Department for Constitutional Affairs has announced it is going to trial Electronic voting using the internet and/or telephone. Bridget Prentice, Elections Minister at the department said 'We need to make sure that people can vote in more convenient ways consistent with a modern lifestyle. [...] 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.' The Open Rights Group (Think British EFF) have responded by saying 'E-voting threatens the integrity of our elections and we oppose its use in our democracy.'"
Open, Receipts (Score:3, Insightful)
Has anyone ever... (Score:4, Insightful)
Has anyone ever come up with one really good reason why a paper record of all votes is a bad idea?
Good God, they mean for Parliament elections? (Score:4, Insightful)
Diebold voting is a fraud, and it happens right in front of the user, on a dedicated machine. The voter can't even see their marked ballot go into a container for verification in the event of computer fraud! It's a sham.
Sounds Great (Score:4, Insightful)
Now when someone tries to cast a vote from home on their spyware-riddled PC, later to find out it wasn't counted or cast incorrectly, then what? Or worse a whole bunch of voters are disenfranchised and don't even know it because of their clunky equipment.
Sorry fellas, you have to leave the internet out of this idea for now. Get the bugs worked out of the stand-alone electronic voting machines first.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Has anyone ever... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why must it be stupidly convenient? (Score:5, Insightful)
We are trying to make voting as convenient as buying a bag of crisps. why?
If someone can't be bothered to walk or drive half a mile to a polling station and put a cross in a box, do they really *care* who they are voting for? Far too many people treat voting flippantly (I don't like the look of him, I never vote for a woman, He has horrible hair etc) as it is. Would we be any worse of if voters had to take a simple test before voting? If you can't name the leaders of the main 3 parties, and pick their faces out of a lineup, are you really informed enough about the issues to vote sensibly?
Politicians in the UK panic about low turnout and think its because voting is hard. Its not, its just that a
First-Past-The Post [wikipedia.org] system means that most of us have wasted votes, even if the main 2 parties were different, which they aren't.
Proportional representation [wikipedia.org] FTW.
Just a thought.
Or another way to put it (Score:3, Insightful)
How to vote is not the problem (Score:2, Insightful)
--Cynic Central
Re:Has anyone ever... (Score:2, Insightful)
It leaves a record on paper.
KFG
Re:Increased turnout (Score:3, Insightful)