Worrying news from Scotland

This is a story that wasn't exactly high profile but is worrying.

Scotland is trialing a new electronic vote counting system for local elections. On the face of it this might sound sensible speeding up counts by moving to a centralised electronic system at 32 centres across the country.

Of course even with the best will in the world it isn't as simple as that.

I start from the premise that elections are very important.  It is also important that every candidate is able to track the progress of the count and be satisifed that it is fair.  This is the strength of manual counting, you can watch each step and challenge the mistakes that inevitably occur and overall if everyone (including observers) does their job we can be fairly confident of the result.

The issue with electronic counting is it removes the ability of those at the count to challenge and check.

One nice feature about hand counts is you can see the stacks. This is clear in single member FPTP, but even in a STV elections you can see the stacks as they are broken and resorted.  You can get a feel that the result is correct.

If this is done electronically then you have to trust the software and hardware.  There are two key reasons not to do this with the software:

1. Malice
2. Incompetence

To get round allegations of both the code and tool chain would need to be open to scrutiny as widely as possible.  Certainly every political party must have access to the code.  But even this is not enough, if you don't believe me have a look at the results of the "obfuscated v" competition. If you know C have a look at one of the entries, and explain why it adds votes for Kerry and Nader to Bush's total  on November 2nd but not on November 1st! Also explain why it works differently on different operating systems. Even ignoring the possibility of malice, bad coding is not unknown to result in bugs that could do similar things. (Many of the entries in the contest use buffer overruns, the same sort of bug that is behind most web site hacks -- not an uncommon event.)

The code itself is also not enough as other entries show: you can use the build process to change source files, and this can also be hard to spot in a large enough software project.

Finally will the system be secure enough to withstand a malicious agent. I presume an air gap will be mean you have to be at the count (but that may not be certain), but how secure will the system be to someone trying to break into it?

A secondary, but also important issues is access to the count.  I don't know if the 32 locations will be a reduction in the number of locations, but if it is then it needs to be handled carefully.  Whilst Scotland and England have very different populations, and so more travel is inevitable than would be usual in England it has to be possible for candidates and activisits to get to the count.  They also need to be able to cope with the number of observers needed for reasonable scrutiny. If this change reduces the number of scrutineers it is undesirable for a robust democratic process.

Elections are too important for this.

(As an aside, clearly the big news story at the moment is the London riots, but I think letting the dust settle is the best idea at the moment.)

The stubborness of Mr Kawczynski

On Today this morning the Conservative MP for Shrewsbury and Atcham was talking about the referendum on changing the voting system. The BBC seem to believe they know the date: 5 May next year with the local elections.

Daniel Kawczynski seems to prefer the current system because he thinks it unfair on him.

You get two votes...

He wants to know why people who vote for minor parties should get two votes to his one. On face value this seems a fair comment: after all they get to vote Monster Raving Loony, then for someone else. However as an argument it is just plain daft.

Let us consider an election under FPTP

Mr Kawczynski 1000 votes
Miss Smith 900 votes
Miss Looney 800 votes
Mr Bob 600 votes

Not an impossible outcome under FPTP in local elections. Now it looks like everyone got one vote in the outcome. However in fact 2300 votes were not counted, and they got no vote. More than twice the number who did get a vote.

This is bad for democracy as Miss Smith next time will try to squeeze Miss Looney and Mr Bob, saying that only Smith can beat Kawczynski here. Those who support Looney might be persuaded into voting for the lesser of two evils out of Smith and Kawczynski rather than the party they support.

Now suppose we had AV. Not a perfect system by any means. Then we'd transfer Mr Bob's votes:

Mr Kawczynski 1150
Miss Smith 1050
Miss Looney 950
Untransferred 150

(even split between the three others and deciding not to).

Now it is true that 150 people have no vote now. That is because they chose not to.

They made a choice not to transfer. They haven't been prevented from voting. Note that all 1000 people who voted for Mr Kawczynski initially find that at this stage have one vote. As do all the people other than the 150 who opted out.

Noone has two votes at this stage.

This goes on until we get to a head to head. At which point the people who voted for the final two still have one vote each in that decision.

... and I don't

Mr Kawczynski says it is unfair that he, who only ever wants to vote Conservative, has only one vote.

He can chose to not transfer his vote, and that is his democratic right. As it is the democratic right at the moment to spoil a ballot paper or stay at home. It isn't true to say he has less votes: he has the same vote as everyone else but is chosing not to use it. Just like the current abstainers and ballot spoilers.

I also don't believe him. I would imagine that he has preferences. Suppose he found himself in a Labour LibDem marginal. Currently he has two options.

1. Vote Conservative and get ignored
2. Vote for the lesser of two evils.

This is wrong. He should be able to vote Tory to show his true views, but that statement should not disenfranchise him. He still has to be represented by the elected official.

He may not have a strong preference between Labour and LibDem, but suppose he found himself in a seat where the BNP have been fighting Labour. He probably doesn't want either to win, but most people would want to avoid a BNP councillor. If I faced this situation I'd be worried: I do not support Labour, but could my LibDem vote be better used to stop the BNP?

The fact we have to address that issue and make that decision is anti-democratic.

Democratic crisis?

In fact across the country currently many people have a grim choice: vote for the lesser of two evils (there are very few three/four way marginals) or be uncounted. The fact that despite this the percentage vote for the big two parties has fallen in every election since 1992 ('92 76.3%, '97 73.9%, '01 72.4%, '05 67.6%, '10 65.1%. In 1979 it was over 80%. It doesn't look much prettier if you include the third party vote.) and the turnout has fallen to the point where I thought the 65.1% in 2010 was good, from 1945 to 1997 it was never below 70%.

In 2005 more people stayed home than voted to reelect the Labour government. The first time this happened.

This must show that something has gone wrong: I think we are facing a democratic crisis.

69.1% of the vote is the most that a government has had since 1945 but even so that is only about 44% of the voters.

Not that I doubt Mr Kawczynski but...

He has claimed he has had no consituents contact him about the electoral system. I find this hard to believe given the Power 2010 campaign to mobilise people this year. Could it be that he didn't see the post as it was filtered for a form response by staffers? Or is it really the case that noone in Shrewsbury wanted the change. From people I know who were LibDem candidates I doubt it.

I will be campaigning for a yes vote on May 5, because AV is an important step towards getting a fairer system and trying to unpick the disenchantment that 30%+ of the population have with government and politics.

STV considered... normal? (somewhere!)

There is a nice article on STV by an Irish political activist over at Libdem Voice.

Whilst no voting system is perfect, indeed it is impossible to invent one which is (see below), STV has many nice features and the article us written by someone with experience of the system.

That's one key feature of STV conservatives (small c, many are in the Labour party too) miss: it is being used successfully in other places. Heck it is being used in the UK: in Scottish Councils and in NI's Euro elections. It isn't a dangerous experiment.

Currently we have a system that gives a landslide to a party polling under 40% of the votes cast. ConLab get 86% of the seats for 67% of the vote. That means just under half the seats haven't changed hands since 1970 (40 years), and just over 1 in 4 (29%) haven't changed since 1945.

This isn't healthy: it leads to a sense of entitlement that explains the ConLab attitude to the other parties. Why don't we know our place and accept the crumbs? A sense of entitlement that creates the expenses system.

For those who want to know why you can't gave a perfect election system have a look at wikipedia's article on voting systems.