JIM Stamper (Letters, October 17) makes some very good points about the security of electronic voting. It is vital in a democracy that the governed have confidence that the system has delivered the government they have chosen.
This requires that there be a physical record which can be verified by simple, universally understandable methods, ie counting by hand. There are doubtless methods by which electronic voting could be verified, but they would not be readily understood by the average voter.
This makes a purely electronic system a poor replacement for the paper ballot. But what if it wasn’t a direct replacement, but instead used to enhance the security of the traditional system? Voters could mark their ballot paper with their choice of candidate, place it in a scanner which would recognise their vote, display it on a touch screen for them to verify that it had read correctly, then put the paper in the ballot box as normal.
We would then have two records of the vote, which could be cross-referenced, making it much easier to detect electoral fraud. Electronic voting has the potential to enhance our democracy, but only if implemented in such a way.
Linsey Young
Edinburgh
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