Online voting by 2020?
Online voting by 2020?
While many of us will be eagerly heading out the door early to cast our votes on election morning, a fair few, we suspect, might just hit the snooze button and not turnout at all.
The lowest turnout in a general election was recorded in 1918 at 57%, due to the end of the First World War. Between 1922 and 1997 turnout remained above 71%. At the 2001 general election the turnout was 59%; in 2005 it was 61% and in 2010 it was 65%.
So potentially on the way up again to pre-97 levels, but how do we encourage more of the snoozers, the other 35%, to turn up at the polls?
Our recent study shows that 52% of UK adults 18+ would support compulsory voting, so there’s a start.
Another perhaps less aggressive suggestion has been to implement online voting, as currently championed by Mr. Bercow.
Our recent survey of over 2,000 UK adults aged 18+ shows that if voting via the internet from a PC or laptop was an option, 45% of UK adults would be likely to vote by internet in future.
Three in ten (30%) said they would still vote in person at the ballot box, while 13% would vote by post and 2% by proxy.
This obviously doesn’t necessarily guarantee that online voting would increase overall ‘turnout’, but the numbers of people prepared to vote by this far more accessible and certainly simpler method, is encouraging.
