To ask the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice whether any manual counts have taken place in local election pilot areas which used electronic counting (a) in 2007 and (b) in previous pilots to verify the accuracy of the counting machines. (141704)

Since 2000, no manual counts have taken place in electoral pilot schemes to verify the accuracy of electronic counting machines. However, pre-election quality assurance audit and acceptance tests have been conducted to verify the accuracy of machinery and software before the systems are used to count in an electoral pilot scheme.