Willaim Ray, Rishabh Jain, Oliver Stenbom, Jennifer Lea
(IBM 2nd Year Group Project Prize - Winner)
An electronic election system
The purpose of E-lection is to revolutionise the United Kingdom’s voting system. Currently the entire system is paper based, from voters penciling across next to their electee to the vote counters writing their results on a data collection form. Votes have to be tipped out onto the table and counted by hand, sometimes multiple times until a successive repeated result is reached. Not only is this a waste of paper but also a waste of time and money.
Booth
With E-lection you still visit a polling station on election day, register attendance with a poll clerk and enter a booth to vote. In the booth you see a screen and a keypad - not dissimilar to that of an ATM. You enter a personal PIN code issued by the clerk, use the keypad to select a candidiate, review your choice and cast your vote.
Station
Inside the polling station, the clerk will still greet voters on arrival and issue them with means to vote, but instead using a laptop and a printer. A simple first name and postcode search will bring up all applicable voters, followed by one click to print out a unique PIN code for the voter to take to the booth. This speeds up the process, removing redundant information and privacy issues caused by the present system.
Outcome
This is where the magic happens. E-lection completely removes the need to count votes by doing it automatically. Voters’ choices are unambiguous and ballot boxes cannot go missing so no vote is wasted. Results become available as soon as the last person has voted and are guaranteed to be counted correctly.