News

Dover District Council (DDC) is welcoming news that the Electoral Commission has found the pilot of electronic counting at their May elections a 'success overall'.

And council taxpayers won't have to pick up the massive £166,300 tab for the trial - a manually counted ballot would have cost around £13,000 - as the majority of the costs of the pilot scheme were met by the Ministry of Justice.

In the Electoral Commission report, it found the piloting of electronic counting in Dover was generally well planned and executed and noted that the e-count took approximately two hours less than a traditional hand count, although it still took two hours longer than was originally anticipated.

Reporting on the cost of the exercise, the Commission report states: "The technical areas of the e-counting system cost £166,300 according to the contract signed between the Council and Opt2Vote, equating to £2.00 per elector or £3.65 per ballot counted. These costs are relatively high compared with manual counting; the Council estimates that a manual count would have cost £13,000 to staff."

Andrew Scallan, Director of Electoral Administration at the Electoral Commission said: "Our report concludes that this particular pilot was a success overall, however we're calling on the Government today to end the further piloting of modern electoral techniques such as e-counting, which have already been extensively tested, until it has published a clear strategy for modernising the electoral system."

Dover District Council was one of 13 Local Authorities across the country selected to run Government pilot schemes in the elections.

Three Authorities, including DDC, successfully operated an e-counting solution to count the ballots, but the pilots were not successful in three other Authorities.

The full text of the evaluation is available on the Electoral Commission website at www.electoralcommission.org.uk or for more information on the Dover evaluation, please see www.dover.gov.uk