Electronic Voting
Last week I touched upon the subject of
electronic voting as a means to increase the number of citizens who
would participate in this important part of our democratic process
and given that Elections
Canada is 'studying' the possibilities will expand
upon my thoughts on this. Given all the recent and ongoing
allegations of malfeasance
regarding poll locations during the last election
perhaps we should consider electronic & telephone voting as a way
to minimize this problem, or will that simply provide more
opportunities for illegal activities?
As I have said before the single
biggest hurdle in bringing such a system to fruition is designing a
system that provides public confidence that the results are valid and
that any software involved cannot be 'hacked'. Given the current
revelations that the 2011 election was subject to at least some phone
scams that discouraged or misinformed
the electorate as to voting places or options this is
singularly important. The use of telephone, internet and possibly
paper ballots combined would at least eliminate any confusion as to
where to vote. This was a major
impediment in the last Ontario Provincial election
where not only were many rural addresses incorrect on voter cards
creating much confusion and the need to personally visit a 'revisions
office', but the voting locations (and revisions offices) were often
many
kilometers away from the community where the voter lived,
this may have lead to some
irregularities taking place. This was blamed upon the
lack of 'accessible' (to physically challenged persons) locations in
rural areas, such considerations could obviously be eliminated with
phone or internet voting. It is fairly obvious that a phone in system
MUST be available for those without internet whilst an internet
system SHOULD be available for those who prefer that option. Those
without phone or internet could be provided with access to one or
both at local library’s, schools, post offices or the like as no
staff would be required to process the vote. I see little advantage
to using electronic
methods of counting or voting at fixed voting locations which
really only speeds up the counting process with little or no other
advantages.
Let us look at what would be required
for such a system
Security :- Given that on line
and telephone banking systems are reasonably secure (provided that
the user protects their password from skimming or hacking) I see no
major problems with this issue. Public confidence in such a system is
however another issue entirely. It is not sufficient for such system
to be secure, the public must be quite confident that it IS secure.
Identification :-
The issuing of a one time pass code to each voter would help ensure
that no one votes twice but it would be hard to verify that the
person who was issued the code was in fact the person voting.
Verification by name, SIN or some such would for the most part
eliminate this problem but voters would then be concerned about the
anonymity of their vote.
Verifiability :-
Having voted how can the voter be sure their vote has been counted
and in the case of alleged problems (with software, hardware or other
counting issues) how can an independent recount be made? The first is
fairly simple I would think in the issuing of a confirmation code
which could later retrieve the voting record of that voter should
they wish to do so. A recount is much more problematical if software
malfeasance or crash is alleged, a total re vote would seem to be
the only solution in such a case however in that folks would not
necessary vote the same way a second time around this could be very
controversial. It would however be much the same as a by-election and
much easier and cheaper to implement than by current methods..
Stability :- Given
that millions of voters would be trying to access any voting system,
be it telephone or internet or both, over a relatively short period
of time the capacity of such a system would have to be considerable,
a crash would almost certainly invalidate the results. The use of
multiple systems, say one for each riding, would no doubt help with
this but the security of each system would have to be ensured and
back up systems, both for power supply and software / hardware be
readily available. There is also the possibility of being able cast
your vote over a period of several days or even weeks as is currently
possible via special and advanced polls.
Whilst
some of these
potential problems may
be difficult to solve I do not think they are insurmountable, any
system of electronic voting will not be perfect and may well be
subject to misuse or abuse but then so is the current paper ballot
system. All in all the ease of voting which should encourage more
citizens to vote far outweighs IMHO any possible additional problems
that mat arise provided that the four issues identified above are
fully addressed.
One final note
here, the practice of federal, provincial and municipal voting
SYSTEMS being entirely designed and implemented by each separate
entity is ridiculous. Yes, they should probably be administered by
each level of government but if a federal electronic system is
successfully implemented it should be readily available to ALL
levels of government in the country. ONE system across the country
for all elections, not wasted money on multiple different systems to
further confuse and alienate voters. Perhaps even ONE comprehensive
voter identification system would make sense, not that the various
levels of government would ever cooperate to that extent, it might
save too much taxpayers money!
Next
week I will examine what reforms are needed and / or are possible in
the House of Commons, meanwhile please note that my Election
Malfeasance page
has received numerous updates.
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