For the past few elections, local authorities have been obsessed with online voting as a way to cut costs. They were planning a trial at next year's local body elections. But now its been cancelled:
The proposed trial of online voting in next year’s local body elections will not proceed after the working party comprised of nine councils made the reluctant decision to halt the trial. Although the working party had recently selected a provider that satisfied all of the security and delivery requirements, the cost burden for the councils involved ultimately forced the decision.
This is the second election in a row this has happened, but its still good riddance. Online voting is fundamentally insecure, and no election conducted online can be trusted. We need our democracy to be more reliable than Microsoft Windows, and that means keeping it offline, where it can't be fucked with by two-bit script kiddies, political parties, and foreign governments. The bad news is that rather than accepting this, the local government working party still wants to press one and try again in three year's time. It would be better if they simply buried the idea for good.
