An electronic voting system hailed as the way to bring Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council into the 21st century backfired last week.
Councillors were forced to revert to the traditional show of hands after the flagship system failed to correctly show the votes cast during a full council meeting on November 9.
The £73,000 setup in the council chamber at the London Road Civic Offices has had a troubled history since being installed in 2008.
Instead of officers counting raised hands, councillors are meant to press a button to cast a vote. The results of who voted in favour, against or abstained displayed on an overhead board.
However, officers abandoned the system after the display malfunctioned.
Communications Manager for the borough council, Sara Shepherd, said the display was meant to be colour coded.
Councillors can press the first button to vote yes, which displays in green, second for no, which shows red, and the third to abstain, which comes up in yellow.
However on the day all the results came up green.
Ms Shepard said: “The problem was with the display of votes, not how they were counted. All the votes were counted correctly when looked at after, but at the time, no one was sure so it was decided to take hands.
“The council use electronic voting to get into the 21st century and if they can sort out the reason why it happened then they will go ahead again with e-voting.”
The system was originally installed in 2008 with the council intending it to go live in 2009. However, when members used it for the first time in May, councillors reported problems with the screen and its use was delayed until earlier this year.
One outspoken critic of the system was South Ham cllr Gerry Traynor who objected to using the system first time around.
While not present on Thursday, he slammed the system, saying the authority should stick to tradition.
He said: “It is a complete waste of taxpayers money and I see no need for it whatsoever. We should not be continuing to use the darn things and if I had my way we would not use it.
“In the future when its used I would still have a problem in using it, it is a waste on money when we could still use the traditional way of just putting our hands in the air.
The new voting system is only used at full council meetings.
