Adopting electronic voting systems could leave British elections vulnerable to cyber attack by other countries, the former head of MI6 has said. Sir John Sawers said traditional pencil and paper approaches to voting were “actually much more secure” – following allegations that the recent US presidential election was subject to hacking. “The more things that go online, the more susceptible you are to cyber attacks,” Sir John, who stepped down in 2014, said. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 USD 0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. “We need to have systems which are robust,” he said in an interview for the BBC documentary The New World: Axis of Power. “The only trouble is, the younger generation of people expect to be able to do things remotely and through electronic devices. “Bizarrely the stubby pencil and piece of paper that you put your cross on in the ballot box is actually much more secure than anything which is electronic.” The Electoral Commission has called for “radical changes” to the voting system while the House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said secure online voting should be an option for all voters by the 2020 general election. A 2014 report by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee called for pilots on online voting to be conducting during this Parliament. Campaigners in favour of the change have suggested allowing people to vote online could boost turnout, especially amongst the young. Areeq Chowdhury, chief executive of WebRoots Democracy, said voter engagement would "only falter and decline" without online voting and dismissed Sir John's claim. "There is no evidence to show that online voting is more susceptible to fraud than the paper alternative," he said. "There have been more instances of fraud across the world with paper votes than electronic ones, and the recent recounts of electronic votes in the US showed no evidence of hacking." The organisation said its researched showed an additional 1.2 million young voters would have participated in the EU referendum had online voting been an option. The US does not allow online voting but “electronic voting” machines are used instead of traditional methods in some polling stations to count votes. Allegations by US government agencies, including the CIA, that Russian hackers intervened in the 2016 presidential election were not related to the counting of votes. Instead, it is alleged that hackers obtained and released sensitive information, including emails from the Democratic National Committee, to help Donald Trump. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe now.
Electronic voting systems could leave systems exposed to cyber attacks from other countries, the former head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, has said. Traditional pencil and paper voting is “much more secure”, says Sawers, as electronic voting could lead to similar allegations of hacking as the recent US elections. The Electoral Commission is proposing “radical” changes to the voting system, with John Bercow, House of Commons Speaker, stating that secure online voting should be a option for the 2020 general election. In an interview on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Cameron said he was not aware of any evidence that Russia had attempted to hack into UK electoral systems.