Electronic voting might undermine parliament

According to Jacob Rees-Mogg, allowing computerized voting might jeopardize Parliament.

MPs are allowed to communicate with ministers on a frequent basis, according to the Commons Leader.

According to the Leader of the House of Commons, expanding electronic voting might jeopardize Parliament since ministers may opt not to attend in person.

Following tests with remote voting during the coronavirus epidemic, Jacob Rees-Mogg stated that it should be the “default” stance for MPs to vote in person.

He also claimed that giving MPs on maternity and paternity leave proxy voting privileges – which enables them to have their vote cast by a colleague – was “very simple,” but that extending it to those who are too unwell to attend Parliament would be complicated.

Expanding electronic voting might jeopardize Parliament

As Independent said: according to Jacob Rees-Mogg, allowing computerized voting might jeopardize Parliament. MPs are allowed to communicate with ministers on a frequent basis, according to the Commons Leader.

According to the Leader of the House of Commons, expanding electronic voting might jeopardize Parliament since ministers may opt not to attend in person.

Following tests with remote voting during the coronavirus epidemic, Jacob Rees-Mogg stated that it should be the “default” stance for MPs to vote in person.

He also claimed that giving MPs on maternity and paternity leave proxy voting privileges – which enables them to have their vote cast by a colleague – was “very simple,” but that extending it to those who are too unwell to attend Parliament would be complicated.

Mr Rees-Mogg expressed concern that if elected officials “do not have the inconvenience of having to be here physically,” they will “not necessarily take it as seriously,” citing how several peers voted while abroad in the House of Lords during the pandemic’s early days of electronic voting.

The Commons Leader added: “I think the default should be that people should be here to vote in person – I think that is very important.

“But I have sympathy with people who have serious illness, who I think are in a category that deserves more sympathy than people who just find it slightly inconvenient to be here.”

The senior minister was again questioned about the Owen Paterson case, and he repeated his acknowledgment that he made a mistake in his handling of the situation.

Mr Paterson, a former environment secretary, resigned from Parliament last year after No 10 failed to get him off the hook after he was found to have broken rules prohibiting MPs from engaging in paid lobbying.

The so-called Leadsom amendment, which sought to modify the standards guidelines in order to allow the former North Shropshire lawmaker a reprieve from his Commons suspension, was whipped by Tory MPs.

“Look, I made it obvious that I got it wrong,” Mr Rees-Mogg told the committee when asked if the Government made the wrong decision by supporting the amendment.

He said:

“”I conflated this specific case with concerns that were more generally held, and that was a mistake. I hope that one always learns from one’s mistakes.”

Pressed on whether the Government was unlikely to whip such a vote in future, he replied: “Having just said that I hope we learn from our mistakes, I hope that would be the case.

“If the Government thought it was the same case, I’m sure the Government would have acted differently with the hindsight we now have.””

Cybersecurity and system design openness are critical to make internet voting a reality in the United Kingdom.

A group of the country’s leading experts on electronic voting (e-voting) has produced a document outlining the technological and societal hurdles that the UK must overcome in order for internet voting to be considered secure and trustworthy.

While numerous countries have experimented with limited kinds of internet voting, Estonia was the first to adopt national online voting on a permanent basis. Although electronic voting was initially implemented in the UK Parliament during the COVID-19 lockdown, ensuring secure online voting for all, as suggested by the UK’s Digital Democracy Commission in 2015, has proven more difficult.

Cybersecurity experts describe the difficulties that need to be addressed to make online voting a reality in the UK in a new concept paper written by the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s (IET) e-voting working group, chaired by Professor Steve Schneider from the University of Surrey.

The following are some of the paper’s important points:

• For internet voting, cybersecurity is a major concern. At this time, technology is unable to address the wide spectrum of cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could jeopardize an online voting system.
• Given the importance of elections and the need for public trust, system design openness will be vital. It will be required to conduct open reviews and trials. In the event of a cyber-attack, the system architecture will need to include mitigation mechanisms to secure elections.
• Internet voting should be viewed as a supplement to rather than a replacement for traditional voting methods. In any voting process, one of the goals is to be as inclusive as possible. It’s critical that any solution to an accessibility problem does not result in a digital divide.
• Elections in low-coercion contexts are possible with current technology. These elections include those held within firms and other organizations, as well as those held when ballot secrecy is not necessary, such as shareholder ballots or votes in Parliament.