ORG report lambasts E-voting

Felix Cohen (London, oD): Wednesday night saw the launch of the Open Rights Group E-Voting report. You may not know it, but there was a significant experiment with on-line electronic voting in the May local elections. This round of elections was also the first time that Britain has become a modern democracy and allowed impartial election observers to attend polling. ORG took the opportunity to find out how e-voting and counting was working on the ground, and our ORG report says that, ultimately, it isn't working. The report has already garnered plenty of attention online (see Avararagado's blog) and it has been covered by BBC News today, but it's official launch was in Westminster on Wednesday night. I was there in capacity both as OurKingdom 'tech' guy, and one of ORG's election observers, and of course to ensure the complimentary wine was palatable. The event ran smoothly, for which all credit to the ORG team. A number of ex and current MPs made it, as well as a large cohort of Electoral Commission representatives, parliamentary researchers and of course, a liberal sprinkling of privacy and e-voting geeks. Even if some thought that others were talking in code it looks like ORG's message, that we simply cannot endorse the results of the e-voting/counting trials as being fair and democratic, is being taken on board. It was a shame we had no representatives from the vendors. They avoided the argument here but will undoubtedly be intensifying their lobbying following this report. The Open Rights Group, and British democracy, has won the first battle in what looks like what's going to be a long war. We will fight them on the beaches...