An electronic voting service to support decision-making in local government

This paper presents details of a web-based, database-oriented “electronic voting service”. Rapid world-wide growth in Internet and Web use has stimulated many initiatives aimed at applying information and communication innovations to create what has been called a “digital” or “electronic democracy”. Internet voting is already widespread in a variety of forms, some serious, most not. A new set of opportunities is offered to facilitate closer links among citizens, between citizens and politicians and direct democratic participation through online voting and interactive polling. Local government decision-making procedures can be enhanced by the application of a electronic voting service to evaluate citizens’ responses to certain issues and to canvass the possible solutions they have in mind. The main characteristics of this electronic voting service were developed on the basis of strong lengthy experience of and a good deal of consultation with local authorities. This interaction revealed a demand for an easy to use (for novice users) and administer tool, low cost with a minimum set of security mechanisms, but still able to provide valid results. The systems services were planned and implemented to be easily expandable. The application is based on state-of-the-art software platform, integrating WWW and database. The system aims to become a pilot for implementing efforts to support on line voting procedures. The service provides the capability to create a questionnaire/poll, view the subject and participate in the voting procedure. Only authorised users can use the system to vote or create a questionnaire. All users can view results from previous voting procedures.