Election 2014 - Ajax Goes Paperless

NRU
May 7, 2014
By Leah Wong

Internet voting is gaining prevalence with Ajax set to become the largest municipality in Canada to run a paperless election.

An expected 98 municipalities in Ontario are on track to use internet voting for the upcoming municipal elections, up from 44 in 2010. Municipalities have until June 1 to decide which voting process they will use in the October election.

Ajax will be offering internet and telephone voting for an eight-day period. All electors on the official voters list will receive a PIN in the mail with a voting information letter.

With this PIN, electors will be able to vote 24 hours a day on any tablet, computer, smartphone or touchtone phone until polls close on October 27.

Ajax is building on the success of other municipalities. Markham introduced internet voting in 2003 and Burlington in 2010.

Markham is considered the pioneer for internet voting in Canada, having first introduced it in the 2003 elections.

Internet voting is used for advanced polls in Markham, with online polls closing several days before the general election - this year at midnight on October 23. Markham continues to use paper ballots at polling stations on election day. Election coordinator Frank Edwards says the city hasn’t gone entirely paperless because it does not use a real time voters list.

Ajax will also use internet voting on election day, with each polling station equipped with 10-12 laptops. Large touch screens will also be available. Ajax introduced the use of a live voters list in the 2010 election, when it allowed electors to cast a ballot at any polling station.

McMaster University political science assistant professor Nicole Goodman says that accessibility has become a major concern for voters. Accessibility includes not only the challenges of voting for people with disabilities, but also the location of polling stations, the time required to vote and election day hours.

“The real draw of internet voting is that it’s truly so accessible,” says Goodman. She says that because some electors with disabilities require assistance to vote, the process was unequal. Internet and telephone voting allow more people with disabilities to vote from home without assistance from another person.

To address this issue, the City of Toronto is implementing internet voting for people with disabilities in this year’s election.

Internet voting also makes casting a ballot much more convenient. Ajax has a large commuter population and being able to vote from a smartphone, tablet or computer allows electors to cast a ballot on election day without taking time off work.

For recent federal and provincial elections, Goodman says there has been unprecedented turnout to advanced polls.

“For me, this says that electors want more accessibility in the voting process and they’re showing this by voting more at the advanced poll.”

There are other benefits to internet voting on top of convenience and accessibility. Goodman and a colleague at McMaster have studied internet voting in Canada and Europe and found municipalities are showing leadership in e-government. They also found improved focus on public service, increasing youth involvement, counting efficiency and voter turnout.

Internet voting can also be beneficial for candidates. Some programs used for internet voting have a candidate module that allows candidates to look online and see who has already cast a vote - though it doesn’t indicate how a person voted.

This allows candidates to focus campaign efforts on voters that have yet to cast a ballot.

Though there are lots of reasons internet voting is beneficial, there are still some proponents who have concerns about people casting multiple ballots and other types of voter fraud.

“Unsupervised voting isn’t a new thing,” says Ajax deputy clerk Nicole Wellsbury. Mail-in ballots have been used for decades, primarily by rural voters. Wellsbury says that internet voting is in many ways more secure, as more of an audit trail is created through the ability to track when the same IP address is being used multiple times.

Goodman says that she has seen minimal issues with internet voting in the municipal elections she has studied. One of the issues is voting cards going to the wrong address, which has less to do with the technology than the quality of the voters lists.