Electronic election counting in Bedford

I've just finished a longish article on the Bedford Elections 2007 and the electronic counting fiasco. Bedford took place in a trial of electronic counting systems (using paper-based ballots).. and in the end this took far longer than the old approach and was far less transparent.

In this case a computer system was supplied by Indra of Spain, and it took a staggering 16 hours to come up with the results when the manual process would probably have been six hours or so.

Note that this isn't electronic voting - it's electronic counting. The old paper-based ballot system is still there although now the vote is automatically logged against the ballot paper number.. and the ballot paper number is listed against your name when you sign for it. Secret ballot? Well, just about.

The awful suspicion that I have is that somebody somewhere will use the problems with electronic counting of paper ballots as an excuse to go for an all-electronic system which will be exceptionally difficult to scrutinise.