Online voting - lost in cyberspace?

A very boring postcard has just dropped through my letterbox - it’s black and white and very dull - possibly even a little bit intimidating in its blandness.

It is a very important piece of mail and should be working much much harder to persuade me... to vote! The drab polling card that communicates with me every few years is not the way to persuade me to set aside time in my busy day on 4th June, to visit the local polling station and and scratch my mark on a ballot paper.

For the record I will be exercising my constitutional right because I happen to feel strongly about this. However, if I had needed a little extra persuasion I certainly would not have found it on the everso dull postcard.

This led me to thinking - whatever happened to the idea of online voting? It was going to be the answer, the cure for low turnout and the solution to one of the most pressing issues of democracy.

Looking at the Google results for ‘online voting’ I think I’ve immediately found the answer. The first page is riddled with links to problems - ‘Online voting can’t be trusted’ ‘Online voting fraud warning’. So it looks like we have gone defensive on the grand idea, and cyberspace paranoia has taken a hold.

Surely if we are really serious about making the whole voting process a little more enticing, appealing and less arduous, online voting is the answer. The machinery is now out there, can we have a bit more effort please to make it work.

To coin a favourite truism - if you always do what you’ve always done you’ll get what you have always got - only with voting numbers you won’t - you’ll get less, and less, and less.

Jez