London polling

The Open Rights Group has just announced there is insufficient evidence to declare confidence in the London mayoral election. Two key issues are that London Elects (the body that organised the election) cannot publish a KPMG audit of software used in the count because of commercial confidentiality concerns, and that observers on election night had access to what amounted to meaningless data.

At a time when the UK is condemning rigged elections elsewhere in the world, that is concerning. If, in the rush to computerise elements of the election process, we lose visibility and certainty of outcome things are badly askew. The only reason to introduce technology in a simple vote count process must be to improve its efficiency. If the count is quicker but less accurate then there is obviously no efficiency gain. Better to delay the result but get it right than expedite and get it wrong.

Further, if we move to technical solutions then there must be agreement with those who provide them that those solutions must be visible. As the Open Rights Group report said:

"London Elects commissioned a partial source code audit from KPMG. However, due to reasons of commercial confidentiality, which appear to have been unforeseen, London Elects has been unable to publish that audit, as well as another audit undertaken by KPMG on the counting infrastructure... if the audit commissioned from KPMG is to be understood as a transparency measure, then it is unacceptable that the results are not available in full to the general public."

To commission a technical solution in the context of an election but not to assess the ramifications of that for the integrity of the process is a huge error.