A huge thanks to everyone who devoted their day to democracy last week, and joined the Open Rights Group Election Watch 2008. Over the next month, we’ll be compiling a report of what we saw at the elections, and specifically at the electronic count of 7 million ballot papers in Alexandra Palace, ExCel and Olympia on 2 May.

Writing the report will involve collating the findings of our nearly 30-strong team of volunteer observers, each of whom was officially accredited by the Electoral Commission. We’ll also be undertaking detailed analysis of rejected ballot figures, and sifting through reports commissioned by London Elects from KPMG and Deloitte on the software and hardware used at the electronic count, and on London Elect’s business continuity processes. We expect to publish our final report in mid-June. Watch this space!

Update: The ORG Electionwatch08 pledge has succeeded in record time! Thanks to all of those who signed the pledge and agreed to dedicate 2 May 2008 to observing the electronic counting of votes for the London mayoral and London Assembly elections. Before the sun had set, 12 (and more) democracy enthusiasts had signed up. If you haven’t signed but you’d like to help - don’t worry. You can sign anytime before 1 March.

This May, 6 million Londoners are expected to vote for the Mayor of London and for London Assembly members. The next day, their votes will be electronically counted in three count centres across the capital. ORG is looking for 12 volunteers to devote their day to democracy and become ORG’s Electoral Commission-accredited election observers for the e-count, which takes place on 2 May 2008.

Last year, the Open Rights Group sent 25 volunteer election observers to observe electronic voting and electronic counting pilots in England, and to observe the electronic count in Scotland. The resulting report raised serious questions about the future of e-voting and e-counting in British elections, questions which were echoed in the Houses of Parliament and by the Electoral Commission. To read more about e-voting in the UK and across the world, download our briefing pack.

London Elects, the body that runs the London elections, invited Open Rights Group members to view its systems in November last year. Last week, they invited us to meet their technical team, and discuss their plans to audit their systems. We were impressed with the consideration London Elects had given to system security - a marked contrast to many of the e-voting and e-counting pilots we saw last year. London Elects have hired-in two independent consultancy firms to audit both their own processes and the source code of some of the software used to count the votes.

However, this “independent” scrutiny gives no hard and fast guarantees that systems won’t go wrong. And in terms of voter trust, it cannot replace the scrutiny of candidates, agents and independent observers on count night. Despite the Open Rights Group’s recommendations, London Elects have declined to include a sample manual recount of e-counted ballots in their process on the night. This makes independent scrutiny very difficult, and makes it even more vital that techno-literate independent observers like ORG are there to watch proceedings.

So if you think you’ve got what it takes to be an ORG election observer, sign our pledge on Pledgebank. We’ll provide you with full instructions on the kind of things that will be expected of you on the day. We’ll also supply a factsheet of what to look out for. We’ll expect you to stay at your allocated count centre until the count has finished, and to turn around a quick report for us afterwards. It would also be good if you could attend the Electoral Commission briefing for observers on 29 April.

If you live in or around London (or are willing to travel there) and you’d like to help out, please let us know by signing our pledge on Pledgebank.

Many thanks to Glyn for watching, and transcribing the most interesting bits of, the Scottish Affairs Committee public evidence session in the House of Commons earlier this week. The Open Rights Group were particularly heartened by these words from Peter Wardle, Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission:

“Ron Gould sets his face firmly against [e-voting] for the time being and we would agree with that. We think e-voting is not a mature technology yet and does not command sufficient confidence to be deployed.”

This statement sits in stark contrast to the views expressed by the Government on Monday, when they ignored the fundamental failings observed in recent e-voting trials, and the analysis of computer security experts, to instead support “the continued investigation into the benefits of electronic voting including remote electronic voting”.

The public evidence session was called by the Committee to examine how voters’ interests can be protected, following the publication of the Gould Review into the Scottish elections in May.

In the May 2007 local elections Open Rights Group observers, accredited by the Electoral Commission, took part in the monitoring of pilot electronic voting and electronic counting schemes. We observed serious failings in the process. Since then, further problems have come to light in other countries leading to many electronic voting solutions being banned or withdrawn. In light of this, yesterday’s Government response to an Electoral Commission report is of great concern.

While the Government acknowledges some of the Electoral Commission recommendations for extending implementation periods for systems, it has ignored the fundamental failings observed in trials so far. It has ignored the analysis by computer security experts that shows the technology for secure computer-mediated voting does not currently exist, let alone a secure system for remote electronic voting. Remote voting systems also threaten the privacy of voting, allowing third parties to coerce and influence other voters, particularly within their household.

The only bright spot is that there is a reliable method that permits the secure operation of electronic vote-counting machines: this requires the performing of hand counts on statistical samples and comparing results with the machine tally to detect errors or fraud. Far less brightly, our experience last May was that e-counting didn’t have these checks, was rather expensive, and even turned out to be considerably slower than a manual count would have been.

But back to yesterday’s Government response. It states that:

“All the pilots supported successful elections… all pilots had comprehensive contingency plans to ensure that electors were not disenfranchised and retained their option of a paper ballot.”

This is not the considered view of the observers present at these elections who saw signifcant problems which included disenfranchisement, with voters turned away from the polling station when they found themselves unable to vote by telephone or online (see Open Rights Group, May 2007 Election Report [pdf], page 25).

The Electoral Commission’s report made a great deal of sense, in that it made clear their desire to see “a robust, publicly available strategy that has been subject to extensive consultation” before any further pilots took place.

The Government’s refusal to halt its pilots is therefore of great concern and reflects a disconnect between Government policy, the evidence and current expert thinking in the field. If the Government’s goal of “evidence based policymaking” is to be upheld, then a public debate about the role technology has to play in our electoral process is long overdue. A scheduled public consultation on the introduction of e-voting would be a welcome development.

However, the Government’s response to the Electoral Commission’s report makes it clear that, from their point of view, this question has already been answered: e-voting is the way forward and the imperative now is to “support [the] implementation of a modernisation strategy”, ie to make it work. What public consultation they will engage in will be focused around not if but how e-voting should be introduced. They refuse to accept, despite evidence from the UK and from abroad, that e-voting may not be a viable or desirable area of pursuit.

Elections are one of the most complicated areas it is possible to conceive of to which to apply digital technology. Not only must the system be robust and easy to use, it must ensure voters’ anonymity and privacy, yet be transparent and auditable, and be completely secure against both external tampering and fraud by employees, consultants and the outsourced workers often used to develop components of the system.

A single software or hardware engineer can bias marginal seats a percentage point or two and there is a low probability of a professionally executed fraud being detected. In comparison, while fraud is possible with traditional voting systems any large scale fraud would require huge manpower and be difficult to conceal. We are told that e-voting will increase participation, yet the pilots tell a story of voter turnout increased marginally, if at all. The risks posed to our democracy by the introduction of e-voting outweigh these unproven benefits considerably.

Every voter expects their vote to count, and to count once. Until there is consensus that that expectation can be met, remote electronic voting should be reserved for the purposes for which it is fit - naming cats on Blue Peter and voting on the X factor.

The Electoral Commission and the separate review by Ron Gould that the Commission instituted have published their reports on the Scottish elections of May 2007

The Gould Review in particular identifies a number of important issues, many of which ORG addressed in our own report on the elections published this June.

• The Review identified ‘fragmented and antiquated’ legislation which made it difficult for elections to be properly run as responsibilities were split between too many bodies. The Review makes a number of good recommendations including appointing a Chief Returning Officer for Scotland and removing administrative responsibilities from the Electoral Commission to help clarify its role.
• The Review finds that combining the Scottish parliamentary and local government elections was problematic and should not be repeated.
• The Review agrees with ORG’s finding that combining the two parliamentary ballot papers onto one sheet was the primary reason for the high level of rejected ballots. The Review argues that ministers appeared to want to combine the ballots from very early on whilst going through the motions of consultation and analysis. The Review recommends that in future two ballot sheets are used. Interestingly these findings are based on analysis of actual rejected ballots. From this the Review suggests, and ORG agrees, that anonymised rejected ballot images should be made available for analysis in all future elections.
• The Review recommends that in future registered party names are used on ballot papers before any descriptions, if they are to be allowed. The ordering of these names would be by a public lottery. This confirms ORG’s view that the use of ‘Alex Salmond for First Minister’ at the top of the regional ballot was confusing for voters in May 2007.
• That electronic counting added complexity and contributed to ballot design problems was acknowledged by the Review. These were compounded by many late changes and decisions by ministers which were often poorly communicated to stakeholders.
• The Review comments that while lead supplier DRS did put emphasis on delivering a reliable system, some problems encountered on election night were missed because final testing did not use the same configuration and data as used on the night.

While the Review makes a number of positive, but minor, recommendations regarding electronic counting, it unfortunately fails to address the security and technical issues encountered by ORG observers. It seems that once again a lack of technical expertise has led an elections report team to focus on other matters at the expense of important issues regarding the security, accuracy and auditability of e-voting and e-counting systems. Whilst building trust in e-counting systems is mooted, the obvious method of using sample manual recounts to check the accuracy of electronic counts is not once mentioned.

While ORG remains unaware of any plans to introduce e-voting in Scotland, the Review states that:

“We strongly recommend against introducing electronic voting for the 2011 elections, until the electronic counting problems that were evidenced during the 2007 elections are resolved.”

We welcome this caution but it raises questions about moves that Gould may be aware of that we aren’t!

The Review overall concludes that there was too much emphasis on completing counts quickly and this, along with managerial failings and politically-motivated decisions by ministers led to ‘voters [being] overlooked as the most important stakeholders to be considered at every stage of the election.’ ORG welcomes the Review’s repeated emphasis on conducting accurate and high-quality counts over speedy counts. However it’s notable that the Review lacks the kind of strong language which will encourage rapid action on the problems noted. The Review notes that:

“… we have had no intention of — and, in fact, have scrupulously sought to avoid — assigning blame to individuals and institutions or questions the legitimacy of the 3 May 2007 elections results.”

Given this perspective it’s difficult to see how the Review could have come to any strong conclusions that would force political action. By avoiding the question of the results’ legitimacy the Gould Review has abdicated itself from an important responsibility. ORG expressed doubts over the results, as did others, and yet the Review we’ve all been made to wait for dodges the issue.

Our e-Voting campaign tour reached its triumphant climax this week in Blackpool. Jonathan Djanogly MP, the Shadow Solicitor General who was hugely complimentary about our work, joined Jason and the Electoral Commission on our panel to discuss the ills of electronic elections.

As in Brighton with the Lib Dems and in Bournemouth with Labour, the vast majority of delegates we spoke to and who attended our event agreed with our approach to the issue. Questions from the floor revealed concerns with accessibility, future developments in cryptography and also the lack of trust in the existing, paper-based system. Some attendees even took our printed materials back to their local parties to help spread the word.

The audio recording is available for download in both ogg vorbis and mp3 format. Or, listen below via the embedded media player. There’s also a few more photos on flickr.

Thanks again to the JRRT, which funded this campaign; to Jason for leading our work on this issue; to William for expertly chairing the conference sessions and to the election observers who worked so hard to put together our elections report. ORG is already looking forward to the 2008 conference season!

The “should we trust electronic elections” bandwagon rolled onwards through Bournemouth and the Labour conference this week. Our aim was to both recruit more supporters and inform the party faithful that e-voting and e-counting are unsuitable for use in our democratic elections.

Our panel - chaired by William Heath - comprised of Alun Michael MP, Andrew Scallan (Electoral Commission) and ORG’s e-voting supremo Jason Kitcat. As in Brighton, many in the audience shared our mistrust of electronic elections after difficult, personal experiences. Unlike Brighton, one attendee seemed very much in favour of holding future polls in a superstores.

We have both ogg vorbis and mp3 recordings of the hour-long debate. Listen in particular for Alun Michael praising ORG again and again for the fine work that went into our elections report! Thanks again to all the volunteer observers and Jason who led that effort. You can also listen here through our media player:

Next week we’re at the Conservative conference (Monday, Tuesday), as well as the ‘Future of Web Apps’ (Wednesday, Thursday) and then the University of London Freshers Fair (Friday).

(Apologies: both our cameras experienced technical problems so sadly photos are in short supply. Also, my machine mysteriously chose to stop itself recording, although fortunately only a minute or two before close.)

Conference season got off to a fine start this weekend, as ORG set off around the country to raise awareness among grassroots party activists of the issues e-voting and e-counting pose for our democracy.

John Pugh MP, Tom Hawthorne (Electoral Commission) and ORG’s very own Jason Kitcat were expertly chaired by William Heath, and addressed a packed house. Some in the audience had had direct experience of the May pilots, some had seen the chaos in Scotland, others came with experience of postal voting, or simply with doubts about how a dramatic change like electronic voting would affect their campaigning work.

You can download audio of the proceedings in full (mp3, ogg) and there are more pictures from the event in the ORG Flickr pool.

Thanks to everyone who made the event run so smoothly, thanks to all the local supporters who showed up afterwards to celebrate with us and thanks to Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd for giving us the financial support to stage the event. Next stop, Bournemouth!

You can also listen here via our embedded media player:

In a speech to the National Council of Voluntary Organisations this morning, Gordon Brown announced he would be convening a Speaker’s conference on voting reform:

Today I am proposing to the Speaker that he calls a conference to consider, against the backdrop of a decline in turnout, a number of important issues, such as electoral registration, weekend voting, and the representation of women and ethnic minorities in the House of Commons.

The Speakers Conference could also examine, in parallel with the Youth Citizenship Commission, whether we should lower the voting age to 16, so that we build upon citizenship education in schools and combine the right to vote with the legal recognition of when young adults become citizens.

Notice that remote electronic voting is absent from the (albeit non-exhaustive) list of potential topics for discussion. This is unusual, as increases in voter turnout is the most often-supplied reason for introducing e-voting into the UK electoral system (even though evidence to support this assumption is rarely forthcoming).

The Governance of Britain green paper produced by the Ministry of Justice before Parliament’s Summer recess mentions remote electronic voting specifically (see para 150). Are the Electoral Commission’s recent recommendations (not to mention the observations of ORG’s volunteer electoral monitoring team) persuading Government to reconsider?

Is e-voting off the agenda?

Update: Supporter meetup venues and dates now confirmed - see you there!

ORG will tour the 3 major English political party’s conferences this Autumn, spreading our message that e-voting and e-counting systems are unwelcome developments in UK democracy. Ministers and representatives from the Electoral Commission will attend our fringe events to join a lively debate on electronic elections. But we need your help. We need you to invite your MPs, MEPs and councillors to discuss the issue and share their views. It took me less than 10 minutes to use writetothem to invite my MP. Event details are copied in below, and we also have letter-writing guidelines to help you out.

Party conference events are restricted to holders of expensive tickets, but ORG couldn’t miss this opportunity to meet up with local supporters, so we’re organising meet-ups in Brighton, Bournemouth and Blackpool. Please get in touch if you can join us, especially if you know a suitable venue! In addition, we need local volunteers to help flyer conference delegates and encourage them to join our fringe events.

ORG fringe event at Liberal Democrat Autumn Conference 2007 - Brighton

When: 13.00 – 14.00, Sunday 16 September 2007
Where: Glyndebourne 2, Holiday Inn Hotel
Panel: Jason Kitcat, Jon Pugh MP and Tom Hawthorn (Electoral Commission)

Supporter meetup: 16.00, Sunday 16 September at The Black Lion, 14 Black Lion St, Brighton

ORG fringe event at Labour Party Annual Conference 2007 - Bournemouth

When: 20:00 – 23:00, Wednesday 26 September 2007
Where: Bay View Suite, De Vere Royal Bath Hotel
Panel: Michael Wills MP (Invited), Andrew Scallan (Electoral Commission) and Jason Kitcat

Supporter meetup: Thursday 27 September. 1800-2100 at The Inferno, Holdenhurst Rd, Bournemouth.

ORG fringe event at Conservative Party Conference 2007 - Blackpool

When: 19.30 – 21.00, Tuesday 2 October 2007
Where: New Victorian Bar, Winter Gardens
Panel: Jonathan Djanogly MP, Andrew Scallan (Electoral Commission) and Jason Kitcat

Supporter meetup: 1900-2100, Monday 1 October, The Saddle Inn, 286, Whitegate Drive, Blackpool