An online vote to decide how to share a pot of four million pounds of improvement funds between 10 of London’s parks has been announced by the city’s mayor Boris Johnson. Some 47 parks throughout the capital have been shortlisted for the funds, which are to be used to make the amenities “cleaner, safer, greener and nicer places to visit” (http://www.london.gov.uk/parksvote ).
The allocation process sees London divided into five regions, with the two parks receiving the most votes in each zone to be allocated the grant. All London residents are entitled to place a single vote for their choice of park.
Concerns have been raised about the voting process, however, which appears to have few built-in checks and safeguards. In a recent posting to an e-democracy.org email list Tom Steinberg, founder of social software charity MySociety ( http://www.mysociety.org/ ) said: “Everyone knows internet votes like this are trivial to rig. Are they seriously proposing to allow up to half a million to be spent like this? Anyone in my team could knock up a script to vote with plausible looking data thousands of times, in about 30 minutes.”
While the GLA reserves the right to disregard any votes if they have reason to believe the voting system has been used inappropriately, the only apparent safeguard to ensure that voters are eligible is the requirement to enter a London postcode on the voting page.
Voting will take place via the website and by post or text message until 30 January 2009 and details of the ten winning parks will be available from February. The project is the latest UK example of a citizen engagement technique known as participatory budgeting, which started in Brazil and has since spread across the world (see E-Government Bulletin issues 273, 1 October 2008 – http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=155 and 276, 7 November 2008- http://www.headstar.com/egblive/?p=170).
UPDATE: Headstar asked the GLA for comment on this story, unfortunately the response did not arrive in time to be included in this issue, but we have included it below:-
Spokesperson for the Mayor, said: ”The Help a London Park vote gives Londoners the chance to have the final say on which of ten London parks get a share of a £4million pot of funds, rather than have the decision made for them. The website, postal and text voting system gives as many people as possible the chance to have their say on a shortlist of deserving sites, and the enthusiastic response from Londoners since the vote was launched reveals that this show of democracy is welcome.
”We have designed a voting system that encourages Londoners to vote easily and simply. A website such as this cannot be 100 per cent protected against multiple voting but we are monitoring voting patterns for any small minority who might attempt to abuse the process and where malpractice is found, those votes will be disqualified.”
And here is me (all the way in New Zealand) looking at this site and thinking back 10 years (to when i lived in London) and voting for my favorite park… because I could remember my post code!! – Is this wrong?(!!!)