Reports suggest that e-voting may soon become a reality in the UK. E-voting systems could help to streamline elections and reduce fraud, but the way these systems are developed and procured could harm our democracy.

One of the issues is whether it would be best to allow a supplier(s) to deliver a system wrapped up in intellectual property (IP). The trouble with this scenario is that without access to commercially sensitive material, such a system cannot be thoroughly and publicly evaluated. A possible way round this would be to allow the core of an e-voting system to be developed by the open-source community and perhaps a handful of universities.

This approach has a number of advantages. Peer-review is arguably the most effective way of testing a proposition. Ideally, the best minds can develop and test an application using proven software and procedures. The end result should be a more reliable and secure system.

Software development, though, is an expensive business. You cannot overhaul the electoral system on the basis of an expectation that someone, somewhere may just be able to get an application finished and tested. Also, the application will need to be housed in some fairly specialist equipment. Could an open-source project be relied on to come up with the necessary hardware?

On the other hand, do we allow a vendor, motivated by profit, to develop an entirely closed application? We do have to recognise that companies need to protect their IP and that usually means restricting access to the core functionality. This situation is hardly compatible with the kind of public accountability that will be needed if any e-voting system is to be trusted. A single incumbent supplier with proprietary technology is also in a dominant position when it comes to upgrades.

So, given all the above, do we hand everything over to one or two large suppliers that will be at liberty to use whatever proprietary technology they want, or do we take the hybrid approach in which open-source technology is combined with off-the-shelf hardware to produce an e-voting system?

My preference is for government to fund a number of universities to develop an open-source application, with perhaps some of the universities collaborating to develop it and the others to test it. The job of loading the application onto a suitable device and then delivering the systems to voting stations can be put out to tender. If the software is developed under the GPL then anyone in the world would be free to use it.

If the UK funds the development of a secure voting system for global use, is that such a bad thing for democracy?