| e-Voting
Demo
Sheffield's
e-Voting
|
SHEFFIELD'S PUBLIC KIOSK NETWORK USED IN E-VOTE WORLD FIRST.
Sheffield leads the world in e-Voting system implementations. Live website based digital voting to elect members of the City Council was pioneered in May 2002.
Then the following year the project was expanded.
The election took place in three of the city Electoral Wards and to ensure total vote security, Smart Cards where issued to all eligible voters.
Not only was this the first live web based election it was also the first ever using publicly distributed Smart Cards for secure identification of the voters.
The second digital election followed the next year: May 2003 It was probably the largest and most significant introduction of Smart Cards in the World certainly in Great Britain 174000 to include half of the cities electorate. This figure has subsequently risen to 450.000.
The city is progressing with multiple uses for smart cards, which provide concrete security for elections, but also have everyday uses also.
There are many advantages for voters due to operating a digital election:-
·Lengthens the voting window and is more convenient.
·Vote for a week not just on the Election Day.
·Vote at Shopping Malls, Supermarkets, Public buildings etc and in the street!
The E Vote application was simply introduced onto the existing kiosk network.
The advantage of using an existing network is obvious it is already accepted, many people are already familiar with it. It is not just used once a year for voting, it is a 24 hour seven days a week public service for a large range of uses.
Partners in the e-Vote consortium:-
Accenture Election Services (Election.com)
British Telecom - BT Exact
Rubberductions
Public DataWeb Ltd
The Touch Screen kiosks were VERY successful in the two elections 2002/3, As popular as telephone voting. Evoting via the kiosks increased the voter turnout by a small percentage, with kiosk users having a significant affect upon user satisfaction.
The overall voting systems, SMS, Telephone, Internet and Kiosk proved that a digital election was effective, with the upfront costs rising due to the requirement for technology change and its associated budget. Once this infrastructure is in place it is effective.
The entire infrastructure including the smart cards and the whole personnel operation was funded by HM Government (ODPM) at £1.1M
The decision from the government to proceed on a larger scale and at other locations has been
shelved for now.
We are eagerly awaiting this decision. |
