eVoting: The case against

A few weeks back there was a debate on eVoting hosted by the Hansard Society (audio files are available here).

Having written about eVoting a few times in the past (see the archive here), I took time to listen to the arguments – only to find myself getting increasingly frustrated with the speakers.

Quite how the Hansard Society managed to end up with such an unbalanced panel I'm not sure, but all three speakers lined up to put the boot into eVoting, with just the chairman, Andy Williamson, putting in a few cautious words of support. (Update: Andy Williamson tweets to say that no one who was asked to speak in favour of eVoting would appear)

In this first post I'll list as fairly as I can the concerns that were expressed with eVoting, and in another post tomorrow I'll add my thoughts on how well these arguments stack up.

Jason Kitcat

Jason Kitcat's opening statement argued that for elections to be free and fair they must be:

• Secure, meaning results cannot be changed, only those entitled to can cast a vote, and people can only vote once.
• Verifiable, with candidates, agents and other observers able to check results and ensure that the intention of a voter is accurately recorded.
• Anonymous, so voters know that their vote is secret.

"A properly run paper-based election can meet those three requirements. I'm not saying the elections of the UK today are perfect. There is definitely room for improvement. But you can meet those three requirements with a properly run paper-based election."

His key point was that it is impossible to design a process which is secure and anonymous while also being verifiable.

And he said that the Open Rights Group (which has been critical of eVoting, and for which Kitcat has acted as an observer at eVoting trials and written critical briefing papers) couldn't declare confidence in past eVoting trials because the result was "hidden behind the technology".

He warned that with eVoting "we risk undetectable ballot stuffing on a massive scale", and he pointed to costs which are "many times more than traditional paper-based elections".

Kitcat also argued that ease of vote is not the main factor in low turnout and suggested that the focus of efforts to raise turnout should be Britain's political culture and voting system, not the electoral administration system. Other options for boosting turnout could include, he suggested, weekend voting or a public holiday on polling day.

Later in the Q&A session he made other points including that multichannel voting (combining eVoting with text voting, postal voting, telephone voting, traditional polling stations, etc) creates added difficulty in preventing one person voting multiple times on different channels.

And with the internet, Kitcat suggested, there is always the question of confirming that the person clicking on the Vote button is who they say they are and difficulties with delivering them a password.

Jenny Watson

Jenny Watson, chairwoman of the Electoral Commission, accepted that the existing system is "close to breaking point" and leads to queues in polling stations.

She welcomed the planned switch from household registration to individual registration.

But she argued that eVoting would not help people who don't understand how to vote in the first place. And she also highlighted the question of access to polling stations for disabled people as an important issue.

Watson said eVoting has "risks" and pointed to the Commission's previous evaluation reports. There should be no eVoting until there is a properly developed electoral modernisation strategy and individual registration, she told the event.

The Commission also believes that eVoting software should be centrally tested before it can be used by local authorities.

"So for now the Electoral Commission is not in a position where we feel comfortable saying 'yes, let's move to eVoting'... I would never say never because I think the technology does change and I think the debate won't go away."

Watson said that addressing the issues of fragmentation and co-ordination in the electoral administration system would be a better place to start making improvements.

Tom Harris

Labour MP Tom Harris said he is concerned about people who are "genuinely worried" about going to vote and not knowing what to do.

He floated the possibility that the UK is entering a "post-democratic era" (I've argued that point too in the past, although from a more optimistic angle) in which it will prove difficult to reverse a historic decline in participation.

And he called for the mystique of going to the ballot box to be maintained, warning that it would be undermined by eVoting.

Voters should "inconvenience themselves" because voting is important, argued Harris. They should prioritise it and have to walk to their local school to cast their vote.

"Is that inconvenient? Probably. I don't care because it's important."

Andy Williamson

In his remarks, Andy Williamson, director of the digital democracy programme at the Hansard Society, argued that there is a "continuum of solutions".

He noted that while no identification is required to cast a vote at present, as soon as technology is introduced there are cries of "no, we can't trust that, it's got to be wrong".

And he stressed the need for trust and transparency, suggesting that "the social appropriation of technology" could overcome some of these issues.

"I am hugely enthusiastic about what technology can do and massively sceptical about what it is going to do."

Williamson argued that the main issues are with the bad design of electoral processes and an unfavourable cost-benefit ratio for eVoting.

So these are the arguments against eVoting. I'll be considering the other side of the coin, which I think has the better arguments, in a separate post tomorrow.