Well, the dust is settling on the e-voting pilots carried out last May, and it sadly seems that things once again haven’t run as well as they might have done. The Electoral Commission’s evaluations of the pilots shows that many were delivered successfully overall, but contained a number of problems, both in theory and in practice.

More to the point, their ultimate recommendation to government is “to end the further piloting of electronic voting, until it has published an electoral modernisation strategy, which must incorporate a clear process for the development, testing and approval of e-voting solutions and a realistic timescale that will allow effective planning and implementation to take place.”

Strong stuff.

So, that’s that for another pilot. Unlike some others, we don’t really hold a view either way on e-voting here at Delib. If it can be made to work, then it’s a good thing, if it can’t, then it’s not. Sounds simplistic, but that’s our approach to everything we do, things must ultimately be judged by how they work in the real world. An agenda shouldn’t be pursued purely on the basis of it having an ‘e’ in front of it, but neither should it be avoided for the same reason.

It was interesting reading the reports though, as we were involved at the edges of these pilots, providing another election info site for Swindon. This time the site could feature candidate information (something people were strongly asking for when we ran it in 2006), thanks in part to a change in the law to permit this.

The reports focus more on the e-voting than the e-engagement and information elements of the pilots, but the feedback we’ve had has been that our site was one of the most successful elements of the pilot altogether, which is always nice. Certainly Swindon’s Election Alarm Clock took off this year, we sent over 26,000 election reminders in the run up to polling day by email and SMS. Great stuff.

So it seems e-voting is probably off the agenda for a while again now. Let’s just hope it e-engagement for elections doesn’t get tarred with the same brush by accident, or we’ll end up even further behind the US in this area than we already are.