ABSTRACT
The British government has become concerned about decreasing popular interest in local government decision making highlighted by low turnouts at elections and the detachment of people from decision makers more generally. Turnout in local elections dropped from an average of 41 per cent between 1976 and 1996 to less than 27 per cent in 2000, and this was ‘perilously close to removing the claim of any local authority to speak with legitimacy as the authentic voice of its community’ (Kearns et al., 2002:13). In response to these problems, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has said that he wants to ‘redraw the boundaries between what is done in the name of the people and what is done by the people themselves’ (Blair, 1996:320). One of the methods advocated in the drive to achieve this new relationship is electronic democracy.
