Online voting a no go in Richmond Hill

Yorkregion.com
Feb. 14, 2017
By Kim Zarzour

Richmond Hill citizens will have to wait a little longer for online voting.

Councillor voted this week against a staff recommendation to set up Internet voting for advance voters in the 2018 municipal election.

The proposal would cost the town $200,000 - too much, according to Regional Coun. Brenda Hogg.

“It’s a lot of money and I don’t believe we should spend it at this time because there’s not enough return on investment. The technology still needs to be proven,” Hogg said at Monday night’s council meeting. “I’m prepared to wait for other municipalities to take the lead on this.”

The City of Markham has used online voting for early voters for a number of years, Hogg said, and the data does not show any great strides have been made in increasing voter turnout.

According to the Internet Voting Project - a research study out of McMaster University evaluating the impact of online polling - Canadian municipalities have offered Internet ballots in more binding elections than any other country in the world.

The project statistics show that in the October 2014 Ontario local elections, nearly 2.4 million electors (or about one quarter of the Ontario electorate) had the option of voting online.