Enabling E-Democracy - Disability, Social Exclusion and ICT
On-Line Transactions
VOTING
4.1. On-line voting in elections and referenda has obvious positive implications for those who find it difficult to get to or into polling stations. As the recent American elections have highlighted, on-line voting in the state of Florida might have solved the problem in which thousands of black citizens who found not just clerical and administrative problems but also found themselves unable to access the polling stations to exercise their right to vote (The Guardian, 2000).
Having said that, the vital recommendation in 2.3. above must be taken into account so that, for instance, on-line voting must not become a substitute for attending the polling station until there is a public sector digital access under-write.
4.2. For those disabled people able to utilise on-line voting facilities the situation will be identical to that which applies to all other citizens. There are also those, such as visually impaired people, who require an intermediary in a traditional polling environment who will be autonomous in the on-line environment. There are, however, some voters who will require intermediary assistance and this raises the legally complex matter of digital intermediary status.
Some of the difficulty in this area will be overcome by the legal acceptance of digital signatures but Parliament may feel that it wishes to make different or separate arrangements for on-line voting.
TRUSTED INTERMEDIARIES
4.3. As there is likely to be a trend for trusted intermediaries to operate on behalf of many disabled people in the digital environment (in such matters as settling utility bills, on-line banking transactions) as a natural extension of handling private correspondence, paying bills and completing forms, there is a strong case to be made for the legal establishment of the role of the trusted intermediary whether this is an individual known to the person conveying the trust or whether it is an accredited organisation which has a Register of those empowered to act as intermediaries. If such a Register is established the Returning Officer will be able to match a Polling Number with a Registered intermediary. Such a measure is somewhat more exacting than that which currently operates for assistance with postal ballots but the current state of public confidence may require it in the short term.
4.4. Individuals may wish to nominate a variety of trusted intermediaries, depending on their conditions. A severely disabled person with a rota of home carers may feel the need to register all of them and to change the registration when the care rota changes but it is important nonetheless that such intermediaries do not have to be registered in a wide variety of registers for different public and private sector purposes. A central Register of Trusted intermediaries should be established under the conditions of data protection legislation.
CO-ORDINATION
4.5. Government responsibility for IT and social exclusion and IT and exclusion resulting from disability is spread across many Departments. There is also the problem, referred to in paragraph 2.3, that citizens should have the right to access Parliament digitally, but that the budget for this would almost certainly have to come from the Executive. In the first instance, responsibility for ICT and exclusion should rest with the Cabinet Office and it would need to make arrangements with Parliament for access to the legislator.