Electronic voting (FOI)

Produced by the Freedom of Information office
Authored by Government of Jersey on behalf of the States Greffe and published on 08 January 2021.
Prepared internally, no external costs.

​Request

On 22 March 2016 the States agreed to implement electronic voting 'as soon as practicable' and 'to report progress to the States annually'.

Please provide the annual reports and, if not contained in those reports, an up to date summary of everything achieved so far.

Response

Since the adoption of ‘Public Elections: Electronic voting’ (P.10/2016), as amended, by the States Assembly on 22 March 2016, the Assembly has been kept informed of progress in implementing the proposition in a number of reports:

Public Elections: Electronic Voting – Electoral Registration Review (R.127/2016)

Engaging with the Public with Jersey’s Democracy: A 3-year strategy (R.5/2017)

States Assembly Annual Report 2016 (R/3.2018)

States Greffe Business Plan 2018 (R.31/2018)

States Greffe Business Plan 2019 (R.51/2019)

Government Plan 2020–23: Further Information on Additional Revenue Expenditure and Capital and Major Projects Expenditure (R.91/2019)

States Assembly Annual Report 2018 (R.119/2019)

States Greffe and Legislative Drafting Office: Business Plan 2020 (R.42/2020)

States Assembly Annual Report 2019 (R.106/2020)

In addition, updates have been provided to the Assembly in response to the Oral and Written Questions which States members can submit for the Chair of the Privileges and Procedures Committee (PPC), including the following:

Oral Question to the Chair of PPC, 20 February 2018

Written Question to the Chair of PPC, 11 September 2018

Written Question to the Chair of PPC, 3 December 2018

Written Question to the Chief Minister, 29 January 2019

Oral Question to the Chair of PPC, 20 October 2020

As the Chair of PPC indicated in response to the Written Question on 11 September 2018, “the introduction of online voting can only be considered when electoral registers are available electronically and there is a secure method for authenticating the identity of voters.” Work to date has therefore focussed on the development and introduction of automatic voter registration. The updates contained in the documents to which links have been provided can be located by searching for the terms “automatic registration” or “automatic voter registration”.

This response has been issued on behalf of the States Greffe. The States Greffe is responsible for the information held by (and on behalf of) both itself and the States Assembly. Neither the States Assembly nor the States Greffe form part of the Government of Jersey and the Government was not involved either in the examination and retrieval of any information required for this response, nor in the drafting of the response itself.