About time our democracy went online

This is the business end of the year for Operation Black Vote. We've been working hard on ensuring all communities are registered to vote with particular emphasis on Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities. We travelled the length and breadth of the country engaging in thousands of conversations with members of the public on the issue of registering to vote and politics more generally.

The feedback we got from people was amazing and dynamic. People may be alienated and angry with politicians, but they remain passionately interested in politics. We will shortly be producing a report of our tour that will offer deeper insight into the public view of our democracy.

OBV has also published a manifesto Reforming Democracy - Fighting Racism that sets out what we believe to be an urgent need to restore public trust in British democracy. Put simply we believe that we need to upgrade our current 19th century democracy to meet the needs of a technologically advanced 21st century society. One of our key recommendations talks about the need to introduce online voting. What this Government report tell us is that British on-line voter registration gives us a clear indication of what the future could look like.

Research published by Government has provided compelling evidence of the benefits of e-voting. Since July 2014, more than seven million people have registered to vote online, while only two million used the old style paper based system. This is huge fillip for those organisations like OBV who believe the new technology will broaden and deepen our democratic base.

On the voter registration lifeline day (we abandoned the term deadline ) of the 500,000 people registering to vote, a massive 97 per cent did so online.

The really good news given the disengagement of young people from the democratic process is that 51per cent of these registrations were young people aged 16-24.

OBV has played its part in encouraging on line voter registration with the launch of our unique OBV voter registration smart phone app that allows users to register themselves, their families and entire neighbourhoods on their phone. In addition our OBV election bus, touring 22 boroughs across the nation, was equipped with state of the art computers that could register people within two minutes…as long as the individual registering had their National Insurance number.

And one of the most dramatic and high profile interventions in this general election was OBV's 'Don't Drain the Colour from Britain' advertising campaign featuring Hollywood actor David Harewood, popster Tinnie Tempah and athlete and media star, Ade Adepitan. The campaign dominated the voter registration story for the week leading up to the 20th April and persuaded or reminded thousands of people to register right across the country. And we finished on a high, this week will see the poster campaign roll our right to bill board sites across the country.

It has become absolutely clear that most people prefer the accessibility that on line registration offers and we believe extended to voting, this could lead to vastly increased voter turnouts. The general turnout trend over the last 50 or so years has not been good. We have seen a continual decline in turnout and in the 2010 elections only 63 per cent of the electorate voted. Such low participation in the democratic process leaves the nation vulnerable to dangerous extremist tendencies. One of the ways we believe that such a dangerous trend can be countered is by the introduction of e-voting.

A recent survey conducted by the opinion polling company Opinium found that 45 per cent of those asked, preferred to vote online. Only 30 per cent would continue to go to polling stations with 15 per cent voting by post. Thats a 60 per cent majority who vote without going to a polling booth..

The House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, Chaired by Graham Allen MP, has published a report earlier this year, one of its suggestions is that the UK should introduce online voting in time for the 2020 General Election.

The report highlights the issue of e-democracy and states:

"Online voting is a proposal for increasing levels of participation that has received strongest support from our witnesses, although support has not been unanimous. Enabling electors to cast their vote online if they choose to do so would make voting significantly more accessible. In light of the move to IER (individual electoral registration), and the already high take up of postal voting, there is scope for giving online voting further consideration, although this would need to be balanced with concerns about electoral fraud and secrecy of the ballot."

We believe that online voting could lead to a substantial increase in the level of participation at UK elections, and we recommend that the Government should come forward with an assessment of the challenges and likely impact on turnout, and run pilots in the next Parliament with a view to all electors having the choice of voting online at the 2020 general election.

After such the overwhelming success of online registration, there can be no doubt that any credible response to restoring public confidence in our ailing democracy, will have to include the introduction of e-voting. The huge success gives us a glimpse of that more inclusive future.

OBV will be producing over the next few months more reports on the theme Reforming Democracy - Fighting Racism and holding a range of events to highlight our work. It's been a dramatic election so far but we are guaranteed that post 7 May will be one of the most interesting and exciting periods in British politics. OBV intends to ensure that our voice is heard in those all important debates - so if you're interested in the broad area of democratic reforms and challenging racism we'd love to hear from you.

Lee Jasper