Doubts raised over e-count system

I see Scotland maybe on the way to an interesting count for the May Elections, with the new Electronic Counting system in use for the first time on such a scale.

As this is the first large scale use of the system you would have thought the numpties on the Scottish Executive (Labour/Lib Dems) would have had enough sense to at least follow some of the calls of the Electoral Commission who asked for e-counting to be independently verified more than three years ago to boost voter confidence but nothing has been done.

Even the company that produces the system has welcomed the call.

DRS head of elections, Sonia Anderson, said: "As an organisation, we would be hugely in support of an independent accreditation programme if e-counting is to become in the longer term an adopted technology that returning officers have the freedom to use as opposed to manual counting."

However, Deputy Scottish Secretary David Cairns said the system had been thoroughly tested and a hand recount was still an option if things go wrong.

So there we are a fairly new voting system and a new Election Count method, should make the tighter results a bit more open to challenge like in Florida.

Remember Labour has a wonderful track record with IT systems!

P.S. DRS the people who supplied the system might just want to check their website because as far as I can see they are in breach of the Companies Act as every company should list its company registration number, VAT number, place of registration and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985.

You'd hope an IT company might get their Website correct!

BBC NEWS | Scotland | Doubts raised over e-count system