Projects to support

The last week has seen the launch of two interesting projects.

First off, Ian Brown (Director, Foundation for Information Policy Research), Jason Kitcat (Free e-Democracy Project and doctoral student at the fantastic SPRU at Sussex University) and yours truly have launched a resolution on 'verified voting'.

Verified voting is an idea that originated in the US, aims to provide a realistic solution to the lack of an audit trail in electronic voting systems, and will help to ensure the integrity of the democratic process should electronic voting be adopted (planned for around 2006-2010 in the UK). Verified Voting provides a simultaneous paper trail to the electronic ballot, that is checked by the voter. This means the voter can instantly check the way their vote is being cast (not otherwise possible with electronic systems) and also provides the material for a recount should the result be challenged (again, not otherwise possible). The US resolution has already garnered thousands of endorsements and is starting to influence government policy. We're hoping the same will happen here.

To find out more about the issues surrounding electronic voting see Jason's website, and to look into verified voting look at Professor David Dill's US VerifiedVoting website. To endorse the European resolution, go to the Resolution page, where you can also see who else has endorsed it. By the way, the Resolution is Europe-wide, so if you live anywhere in Europe, I encourage you to endorse. [There are plenty more materials on electronic voting on my own e-voting page, and more still on the Usability Professionals' Association website.)

The other project is Tom Steinberg's MySociety, a venture aiming to both secure funding for civic society software projects, and to allocate those funds to worthwhile and realistic projects that will contribute to the greater social good. Tom has a column in today's Guardian newspaper, explaining the rationale. Tom needs money, ideas and people who can do stuff. Again, he's more than happy to consider projects originating outside the UK.