Votes in UK general elections are counted by hand (Andrew Milligan/PA)

Votes are not cast electronically in UK general elections

By August Graham, PA
20:47 - January 23, 2024

A popular post on social media has claimed that a contract for “new electronic voting machines and associated software to be used in the next UK general election has been awarded to Fujitsu”.

Evaluation: False

Electronic voting machines are not used in UK general elections.

Fujitsu does hold a contract with the Scottish Government to provide electronic counting services – but not electronic voting – for Scottish council elections.

The facts

Scottish council elections are run on the Single Transferable Vote system in which voters fill in their ballot papers in order of preference, putting a 1 next to their favourite candidate, a 2 next to their second choice, and so on.

In 2007 electronic counting, or e-counting, was used for the first time in the Scottish local government elections. According to Aberdeenshire Council this is in part because STV requires “complex process of counting mathematical calculations”.

E-counting is different to electronic voting. Voters still fill in a paper slip, but rather than being counted by people, this slip is tallied electronically. If the machine is unsure who a vote is for, human counters will be alerted and will make a judgment.

In 2020 Fujitsu won the contract with the Scottish Government and Scottish Local Authorities to support the electronic counting of votes in Scottish local government elections.

The first election Fujitsu was involved in was the electronic counting of the local elections in May 2022. None of the voters were cast electronically.

A community note on the post on X/Twitter points out that a satirical article was published on NewsBiscuit – which bills itself as “the UK’s original fake news” – joking that the Government had called an election for February which would include the “groundbreaking introduction of voting machine technology built and supplied by Fujitsu”. This is a clearly satirical article and was posted four days before the claim on X.

The independent Electoral Commission confirmed to the PA news agency that there is no law that allows votes to be either cast or counted electronically at elections for the UK Parliament in Westminster. Therefore all counting in the next general election will be done manually and involve physical ballot papers.

Links

Claim on X (archived)

Report on UK voting systems (archived)

Aberdeenshire Council on e-counting (archived)

Fujitsu press release on contract award (archived)

Article on NewsBiscuit (archived)

Electoral Commission website (archived)

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