PR stood for public relations in my world but in the current electoral climate, PR most definitely stands for proportional representation.
The shambles of the last few days have shown our out-dated and ineffective electoral system in its true glory – it’s not worth the ballot paper we put our hard-earned cross on!
Not only that, the TV images of people queuing outside the polling stations on Thursday night defied belief.
The only positive from spotlighting both of these antiquated activities is the fact both should now face an overhaul and events of the last few days should never be allowed to happen again.
One realistic solution to the polling station chaos is e-voting. The US is planning to introduce it and India has been using it since 2004.
The UK ran a pilot scheme in 2007 that threw up security issues. But that was three years ago, Internet security has been tightened up considerably, and even an odd glitch has to be better than the flawed approach we are currently using.
Forget the politics now unfolding – earlier this week I heard one BBC news reporter accuse us, the public, of being responsible for the ‘mess we are in’. Quite apart from the fact he should have included himself in the accusation (unless of course he was one of the thousands who missed the 10pm deadline!) his comments left me reeling.
The sooner the ‘mess’ gets sorted the better – the effective workings of a hung parliament have yet to be proven, but in the meantime, work must begin on creating a better, more rigorous electoral system before the time comes again to cast a vote.
Is e-voting the answer? Would value feedback….
Dawn Strange
Accounts Director
[ back to top ]
E-voting is definitely good system and now there are much tight security so no manipulation will be there and i will prefer definitely E-Voting.
ReplyDeleteA voting pad in every booth would be a good idea, especially if you could log in from home and register your vote.
ReplyDeleteHowever there is something about the theatrics of going to a polling station that still appeals to me - the present system has worked fine for many years, it is just unfortunate that in so many areas the local returning officers did such a bad job, especially running out of voting papers when they had a numbered list telling them how many potential voters there would be.
I still believe in the old adage "to err is human but to really foul things up needs a computer".
America went over to e-voting because their system left the result in doubt, an x in the box or numbering 1,2,3,4 under an AV system is still clear and gives us the drama of an all night count. So I don't see the need to change, especially when the country is so deep in debt.