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1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America
gpmap writes "From the London Free Press: As voters across Ontario were preparing to head to the polls today to elect their municipal leaders, a technological first was quietly taking place in the easternmost reaches of the province. About 100,000 voters the counties of Prescott-Russell and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry were registered to cast their ballots online. Under a new system developed by CanVote Inc., an eastern Ontario startup company, registered voters in 11 area municipalities had the option of voting via the Internet or telephone. "I believe we're the first to do a real full Internet election in North America," said Joe Church, president of CanVote Inc. "People vote by Internet or telephone at their choice. There is no conventional ballot at all." Voters were issued a PIN number with conventional registration cards mailed to area households. Since Nov. 5, people have been logging on to a CanVote website to vote. Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather." Of course, systems like ProxyVote have been around for a while, but those are commercial issues, rather then state issues.
Isn't too easy to buy votes here?
People could just sell their PIN numbers and large banks of people sit at phones all day voting by using these bought PINs.
While I am fully supportive of technology, the one thing that I think might be a problem is how do you keep undue influence away from the voters? We already have a huge problem that isn't addressed in people shuttling old people to the voting poles, telling them who to exactly vote for. Now you can send them directly to their homes and say even "help" them make their selection. It will be ripe for fraud. What used to be a totally private matter can now be exploited by those who want to "stuff" the ballot box.
I am not sure there is a perfect way, but at least voting in person in a private booth makes that person harder to influence. Heck, you could come up with automated "bots" that all you need to do is type in your PIN and "we promise to vote for all the right people to you." Heck, the social engineering issues are ripe for exploitation.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you need to!
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather.
I'll give him that. The one barrier it doesn't remove, however, is the economic one that provides Internet access to some but far from all. Millions of poor households receive monthly telecom discounts on just their phone lines--how/why could they shell out for even dialup service? Low-income citizens still constitute an enormous chunk of the non-voting population, which is big enough in itself.
The coolest voice ever.
In the last provincial election, for example, only about 55 per cent of the Ontario voters turned out to the polls.
The article really plays up out bad voter turnout is... however, US voter turnout is also right around 50%.
I hate when an article stresses facts that are the normal to push for some radical changes. I agree that non-traditional voting will be a welcomed change. However, don't suggest that Ontario needs it because their turnout is so horrible.
Davak
No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", please.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
An even bigger concern I see with it is auditability. There's no paper trail, how can you verify that your vote was counted correctly? If someone cracks their database and changes the results, how would you even know? How could you possibly have any confidence in a poll without a paper trail?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
-MDL
Happy meals fund terrorism
That also raises the interesting idea of being able to override your own vote later because you've changed your mind (seen a new broadcast debate, for example). You could thus have a constant online poll during the election period which monitors how the campaign is going.
And from there, why not have that system running permanently? Direct democracy in action - do something stoopid one day, get instantly voted out of office.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
Oh, right, that's why it won't happen....
"This is why men never share their feelings; because women always remember." -Just Shoot Me.
This is bound to increase voter "turnout" which could be a good thing, but
i) how seriously will people take such a vote? Maybe a little vetting via bad weather and a walk to the local school is not such a bad thing, and
ii) how will this new, higher-percentage of the voting public reflect the public at large? Yes, there are terminals available at many public librairies, but it doesn't take a sociologist to realize that there's still going to be a class bias perpetuated if having a computer means easy access to the vote.
A higher percentage of voters is no good if only the needs of some groups in society are being reflected.
Just my $.02
In this country there are three ways to cast a vote, besides walking to the polling station:
- Get a lift from a volunteer
- Arrange a postal vote in advance
- Arrange a proxy vote in advance
The ballot papers are counted by hand, with candidates and guests in attendance. This system works. Now, you may say it is a minor inconvenience to actually have to get off your behind and cast your vote once every five years, and maybe to have to help counting up the papers or driving assorted strangers back and forth to the polling station all day. But your employer is not allowed to take any disciplinary action against you if you have to vote on works time, and when you realise that the alternative could be a fascist dictator forcing his way into power by hijacking an election, it really doesn't seem so much of an inconvenience after all. Maybe it would be appropriate to punish people who fail to vote? People have fought and died for democracy, and yet this is what we do in their memory. Of course, [GODWIN'S LAW EXEMPTION REQUEST] it doesn't help that there are politicians out there who have ideas that Adolf Hitler could only have had wet dreams aboutJe fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Someone who is not motivated enough to take an hour or so to travel to their local voting booth and vote does not care or know enough about the issues involved to make an informed and sensible choice.
Having 90% of the population vote when only 40% of the population researches, interrogates and cares only means you'll have 50% of pseudo random "noise" votes drowning out the informed, important votes.
Why are people surprised by this? Politicans that are for this sort of thing think they can use it to their advantage, to (Shock! Horrors!) cheat the system. There have been elections in the US where out and out voter fraud have occurred, (notably, Wisconsin and Missouri, and of course, Chicago), and all this will do is make it harder to detect, and harder to enforce.
Wait until someone breaks into this system and turns an election on it's ear... You'll see some mighty fast backpedaling to the old system.
The claims that that happened during the 2000 election were investigated and shown false.
Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather
This may work in the US, but in another countries this doesn't seems fair. In my country (Argentina) postal services sucks, so probabily you won't get the card/pin by standard mail. There are a lot of people with outdated address on the gov' databases. So even if the cards are mailed, they will arrive to a different place. And the election day here is marked as a red calendar day so you don't have to go to work that day, so you don't have excuse to not to go to vote. The only problem, is that you must stand in a line for up to one hour. Another problem is that you could get force to be a election official (even if you don't want). Ok, going back to the antidemocratic issue, the main problem I see here is that there is people that doesn't want to learn new things and won't adopt a new system (most older people is like this) and won't vote at all. So I doubt it will make democracy more accessible
DNA in your Linux: DNALinux
OK, it's official. Democracy is officially worthless.
Sorry, I know how the internet works, and that's more than enough to convince me that nothing as important as voting should be done through it.
It's been a long time.
Click here if you also want an extra vote when implemented in the United States. I hear the Philippino's are the best way to accomplish this task.
If you're too damn lazy to take the effort to go to the polling place, maybe you don't deserve a vote!
By "authentication" I mean the security sense: verifying that you are who you claim to be.
This is not the only issue with online voting (the slashhorde has already pointed out that there is a privacy concern), but it is, in my opinion, the most important one. They mail you the PIN number. This means your vote is only as secure as the postal service. How secure is that? Not very damn secure at all.
Never mind that someone else could pilfer your mail and therefore your constitutional rights, someone in your own household could do it. Imagine your 10-year-old son deciding to get back at you by voting Republican (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is).
Absentee ballots also have this issue, but at least those have a physical signature. Until we all have smart cards with biometrics to use for identification, any such system will have a major authentication problem.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
You're saying that this system will work as intended, allowing people to express their actual views more easily? If it works that way, then more power to them.
The cynical view is, this will allow people to give their PINs to the local strongman in exchange for fat loot.
If people in Florida couldn't figure out a damn punch card, then I'd like to make a wager with you whether they can navigate phone menus or a website!
"Oh drat, I meant to press two!"
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin