In an interview on Conservative Roundtable, computer scientist Rebecca Mercuri recommends that US election officials, too, should wait until the paper trail is fully available before using money allotted under the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) [HTML|PDF] to purchase new machines.
Like voting machines, online voting, while useful for smaller scale elections of less overall importance, also still presents many security questions. Reports by the California Secretary of State (1999), US National Science Foundation, and others have concluded that additional innovation and problem-solving are necessary before Internet voting should be used in public elections, mainly due to security risks which threaten the integrity of the voting process. The same can be said for voting and counting machines. While the Internet is vulnerable to “denial of service attacks”,1 so too are the machines used throughout the USA.2
In the Meantime
While maintaining paper ballots, Elections Canada has developed a number of accommodations for voters with disabilities. For example, visually impaired voters can be provided with a large print ballot or a cardboard template allowing them to feel where to mark for a particular candidate. “Special ballots” can also be cast through the mail and those who require assistance to vote can bring a friend to the polling station. This, of course, does not address all disabled voters' right to vote in secret, which is the most compelling reason it would be worthwhile to have an electronic method available at some if not all polling stations.The Electronic Frontier Foundation rightly points out that DRE systems are not the only accessible methods of voting and point out that tactile ballot templates (like those used by Elections Canada) and electronic ballot markers are available alternatives to DRE systems.3
Is a mixed system advisable?
A further possibility that finds some common ground between no technology and a total reliance on technology is to have a mixed system in which a DRE with VVPAT is available at polling stations for those who require it for accessibility reasons (limiting the number of people who vote via machine is advisable assuming there is a correlation between the number of machines and potential for fraud; limited machine-based votes also make an audit of the ballots cast by machine faster and easier), and perhaps also have online voting available for absentee voters (if this is really easier/more secure than the mail, which is certainly open for debate).
In 1997, Florida allowed the option to vote online to overseas military and civilian voters “as a means of alleviating the time constraints of the current mail-based, absentee voting system and in doing so allow for greater participation.”4 This option is appealing because it applies to only a small part of the franchise, so it is arguably less likely to be the subject of fraud. The system of authorization should function such that only as many people can vote as have received authorizations. When dealing only with absentee voters, this number is much smaller than if online voting were made an option for the entire franchise, so some of the problems highlighted by Mike Smit can be alleviated, at least to some degree.
When the Time Comes
Should a jurisdiction grow impatient and decide to go ahead with implementing new voting technology, the best options seem to be precinct-count optical scan equipment (as opposed to central-count equipment) and DRE systems with a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) (this is the option recommended in the Rubin Report).5 Both of these systems allow for voter verification as they produce a paper record contemporaneous to the ballot being cast and both work to prevent errors in casting votes as they can detect overvotes and undervotes, which the elector can then correct before verifying their ballot. Where the DRE system proves more beneficial is in terms of accessibility for electors with disabilities.
If, and likely when, the time comes that federal and provincial chief electoral officers decide to introduce electronic voting technologies, it will be important to set technical specifications, norms and standards, as highlighted by the Chief Electoral Officer of Quebec in his report following the November 2005 municipal elections.
Unlike the situation in the United States, Canada has not been faced with a flurry of calls for recounts and litigation stemming out of the electoral process, so there is not as great a need for reform at the present time. As we have seen, Canada’s situation is more like that of the United Kingdom. Election officials should take advantage of this lack of pressure and take the time to fully explore the possibilities for e-voting in Canada and develop acceptable standards, since unlike in the US where counties tend to dictate their own voting methods, those standards will apply to the entire country or province. In light of the s. 3 jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of Canada, the legislature must take steps to ensure that any electronic voting methods introduced can be as legitimate as our current paper ballot system is in the eyes of the electorate.
1 POSTnote, supra. at p. 3.
2 CNN. "Scattered computer glitches slow voting." 08 November 2006.
3 Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Accessibility and Auditability in Electronic Voting." May 2004.
4 Elections Canada Report, supra. at p. 29.
5 Rubin Report, supra. at p. 21.
