Do we need to start preparing for electronic voting in 2021?

There is a very thought-provoking piece by TSE (the poster formerly known as The Screaming Eagles) on the Political Betting site about how you organise elections safely in a pandemic.

It can be read here.

We've postponed the elections which were due this year for one year, until May 2021, but we cannot go on doing that indefinitely.

TSE asks if we may end up having to hold elections in which most campaigning and all voting is done electronically.

There is a precedent for this and I was personally involved.


Between 2002 and 2004 the then government carried out a number of trials with electronic and postal voting in local and European elections. (locals in the first two years and an all-postal in North West Region in the 2004 Euro-elections)

St Albans City and District Council, of whose cabinet I was at the time a member, was one of the councils who took part in the trial. We had an initial run with electronic voting in two wards in the May 2002 council elections and in the entire district in an all-out election in 2003.

It did work, though the systems only just coped and there were some very anxious moments indeed about whether we could deliver a robust and clearly secure and accurate outcome.

The original idea was to have remote voting only but there was a rebellion against that and we ended up with a trial in which every possible method of voting - internet, telephone (voters being sent a secure PIN which could be put into an online application or an automated system over the phone to validate identity and their vote), conventional postal vote, touch screen in the polling station and conventional ballot paper in the polling station - was available.

With all of those options and a huge publicity campaign there was a very slight increase in the turnout. Given the cost and trouble the then government decided not to pursue the idea at the time.

My main take from what I remember of the whole exercise is that electronic voting certainly can be used but it took an enormous of effort over two years to make it work.

If this is likely to be needed - and I have a horrible suspicion that TSE may be right and it could well be - planning to implement this should it be needed in 2021 needs to start NOW beginning with digging up the results of the 2002 and 2003 trials in St Albans and elsewhere.

Now, I wonder whether I kept the cabinet papers with the report on that trial which I would have received nearly seventeen years ago ...

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