John Thornton suggests that the process of voting ‘has failed miserably to keep pace with social and technological change’ (‘Vote with your finger’, April 23–29).
However, internet voting, like easier postal voting, might be popular and ‘modernising’ but risks stepping back more than 138 years by undermining the secret ballot.
The Ballot Act 1872 guaranteed the right of all electors to cast their vote in secret. Even today, filling in the ballot paper in a plywood booth with a stubby pencil means no-one can ever know for sure how I choose to vote. I cannot offer my vote for sale, be coerced into voting or have my vote filled in by someone else. This ‘old-fashioned’ way of casting a vote means that no-one can be deprived of their own free choice. The same cannot be said of internet voting or extended postal voting.
Paul Leake,
Durham
