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                                                                                Chris Lightfoot,




                                                                                25th April 2004


Rt Hon. John Prescott MP,
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister,
26 Whitehall,
London,
SW1A 2WH


Dear Mr. Prescott,
                      Council of Europe project on Electronic Voting
The Council of Europe is currently conducting a research project into the use of electronic
voting in Europe; the British government are represented on the working group by a num-
ber of civil servants from your department, and I assume that ODPM is therefore the De-
partment with responsibility in this area. The group have lately prepared a draft Recom-
mendation document on standards in electronic voting, which is available from their web
site,
http://www.coe.int/T/e/integrated_projects/democracy/02_Activities/02_e-voting/
As you will be aware, it is difficult to make absolutely sure that electronic voting systems
accurately record the will of the voters. Because electronic voting machines are simply com-
puters running special software, if there are any errors in the software, they could cause vot-
ers' preferences to be recorded incorrectly. If the voting computers are the only repository
of information about the votes, there would be no way to verify the results of an affected
election. Even worse, if the voting machines have been maliciously programmed to record
inaccurate results, an election could be rigged; the authorities and the voters would have no
way to tell that this had happened. For instance, a malicious person with access to voting
machines could arrange that one in ten times that a voter selects a Labour candidate, their
vote is actually given to a Conservative candidate; but this fact is never displayed to the
user. This would create a ten per cent swing from Labour to Conservative, but it would be
impossible to prove that this had been achieved dishonestly.
Experts agree that the way to solve this problem is for voting machines to give each voter a
paper `verifiable receipt'. This is jargon for, basically, a ballot paper. When a voter indicates
their vote on the machine, it will print out a record of that vote, which the voter can inspect.
If it is the same as their preference, then they put the vote in a ballot box, and confirm to
the computer that it has recorded their vote correctly. If there is any doubt about the results
of the election, the paper `receipts' can then be counted in exactly the same way as ballot
papers are now. Because voters can check the receipts they are given, the same voters can
verify that the machines are behaving as they should; it is impossible to achieve the same
effect without verifiable receipts.
(As an aside, it is sometimes said that electronic voting machines should not produce paper
receipts, since voters could to take proof of their votes with them from the polling station;
this could lead to bribery or coercion. This claim is a misconception. The paper receipts
must be regarded as the authoritative record of the votes -- just as ballot papers are now
-- and a voter who does not deposit their paper receipt should be regarded as having ab-
stained.)
Therefore it was with great concern that I noted that the Council of Europe's working group
has not recommended that any electronic voting machines used in Europe produce paper
verifiable receipts. Although the Recommendation requires that electronic voting systems
can be audited, they do not require that there are paper audit trails (such as voter-verifiable
receipts), which is the only way which would actually work; and, worse, the Recommenda-
tions assume that future electronic voting systems will support remote electronic voting, for
instance by voters voting from home. Unfortunately, it is impossible to make remote elec-
tronic voting trustworthy, because -- just as when there are no receipts -- there is no way for
the voter or the election authorities to be certain that each vote is correctly recorded. Sadly,
therefore, remote electronic voting cannot be trusted unless it is combined with receipts,
which would effectively be the same as postal vote forms.
Although electronic voting may be an effective way to increase turnout and make it cheaper
to run elections, neither of these aims is as important as making sure that the electoral pro-
cess properly expresses the will of the people. I urge you to ensure that ODPM does not
lend its weight to any proposal for electronic voting which does not require paper receipts.
Although the current Council of Europe Recommendation is only a draft, without prompt
action the draft may become final, and the Council's proposal -- which in other respects is
sensible -- may be adopted for real elections, leaving them open to undetectable fraud.
I hope that I can rely on you to ensure that any electronic voting systems which are adopted
in this country always issue paper receipts, so that they can be trusted by voters to accu-
rately record their intentions.

                                      Yours sincerely




                                      Chris Lightfoot




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