Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Electoral Commission report on 2008 London election

The Electoral Commission’s report into the London Elections is now available. Many of the concerns, issues and recommendations echo those of the Open Rights Group's report on those same elections.

The Commission is seriously concerned about the lack of access to the partial audits of the system done by KPMG, the excuse (as has been the case in the US) being software vendors' desire to protect commercial secrets. It is simply inexcusable for a key element of an electoral process to be a commercial secret - it totally kills transparency. As the Commission says:

"We recognise that commercial suppliers… may wish to protect their commercial interests. However, such wishes should never take priority over the interests of electors"

Becky Hogge has also just posted a short commentary on the report at the ORG blog.

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