I will briefly return from my summer
hiatus to bring a couple of things to your attention, first up a few
things from the recent report by Chief Electoral Officer Marc
Mayrand.
Much has been said in the past about
the cost of an 'unnecessary' Election when it seems that some use
this as an excuse to NOT hold the government of the day to account by
going to the people before the next scheduled date, well folks at a
cost of just $12 per person it seems to me that taxpayer cost is NOT
a factor in such decisions. The now defunct per vote 'subsidy' was
minuscule by comparison but I am sure that Harper will find a way to
also cut the budget of Elections Canada to his advantage. I suspect
that the cost to political partys and their supporters, particularly
that spent on negative TV advertising, is much more of a factor.
Unfortunately such choices are no longer available federally.
With the Ontario election period not
even started yet we have already been bombarded with negative ads
(supposedly from 'citizen groups') the cost of which must run into
the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Seems the success of such
tactics by the Harper regime has been taken note of by the provincial
back room boys!!
The second piece of news is the ongoing
study of moving towards on line (and / or other electronic voting
methods) for the next federal election. Much has been said on both
sides of this debate both in regards to federal election as well as
provincial and municipal elections, I will not repeat it all here. I
will however say this:- I believe it is inevitable, will indeed
increase the citizen participation particularly amongst the 'younger'
crowd and a secure COMMON system should be developed for all such
elections. That said there is, as I see it, one major hurdle to be
crossed that being 'verifiability', the ability to do a recount of
the votes in the event of any problem (or perceived problem) with
the software, hardware or personnel involved, and I do mean the
actual votes NOT what the computer SAYS are the votes. This all goes
to our confidence that the system cannot be corrupted and that our
votes are indeed counted as cast. Perhaps some kind of computer
receipt that can be recast in the event of problems or other feedback
mechanism can be designed. It will be interesting to see what comes
out of this initiave.
And lastly Elections Canada has also
released the official poll by poll results of the 2011 federal
election for those that wish to see where withing their riding they
won or lost support, not that it will have a lot of validity in
either the upcoming provincial election or the next federal election
some 4 years up the road. Available at
http://www.elections.ca/scripts/ovr2011/default.html
1 comment:
In the end, a key component of any online voting scheme is trusted hardware to place the vote on. Current PCs can in no way come up to that standard.
One solution is general purpose PCs like Google's Chromebook, except a widespread legal mandate for that kind of computer is dangerous. Trusted computing can very easily become treacherous computing, especially when such computing becomes widespread and commonly used. This sort of thing needs to be left up to the market.
Another solution is for Elections Canada to provide a trusted device to every elector. The device would need its own display and would provide cryptographic security to validate the vote. However, big problems include people losing theirs over the course of 4 years, and that they'll definitely cost more than $12/voter.
Paper is just better and cheaper. Mail-in ballots, especially by Canadians in foreign countries, might be greatly improved by online voting though. There's fewer of these voters, and the benefits are greater for them. Elections Canada could even trial potential systems with this group over decades until they think they have it right.
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