Online voting alternative, not replacement, for traditional voting

Our online lives are growing. We can shop, bank and comment on almost anything online. So it was really only a matter of time before Toronto joined ranks with other municipalities in talking about the possibility of online voting.

Rocco Rossi pledged to invest in online and telephone voting by 2015 as part of his three R's of election reform: Respect, Results and Recall. Other promises Rossi has included in this part of his platform are term limits and the ability to recall the mayor and councillors.  Mayoral candidate Joe Pantalone has also promised to introduce online and telephone voting.

Municipalities already have the power to introduce alternative voting methods, and online voting has been used in municipal elections since the 1990's.

In  2003, Markham introduced online voting in its advanced polls. The total voter turnout was 37.6 percent, up from the 28 per cent turnout typical for a municipal election.

Rossi's goals in introducing online and telephone voting to Toronto are to increase voter turnout, as well as to make the voting process more accessible and to encourage new voters.

I definitely think online voting has its place. It is quicker in this day of busy schedules, and it cuts out the confusion of which polling station you have to go to and when. It would also be more cost-effective in some circumstances, such as Canadians voting from abroad. 

Moreover, it may be more accessible for some people, including individuals with disabilities.  However, it can't become an excuse for not continuing to provide full accessibility at polling stations. 

Should alternative voting be introduced in Toronto, every individual, regardless of their situation, must have the right to choose which method they use to cast their ballot.

While online voting may make sense for young people in today's internet-driven age, in my opinion, there is something special about going to the polling stations to vote. To me, it is something we do as a community and an experience we have that reminds us of what it is to be an active and involved citizen in a democracy.

About Sarah Evans

Comments

[Kelly Gray]

Online voting has a very long way to go before it can be considered safe for use in an election, if it ever can be.
The first problem is with security. With the current hand counted paper voting system, changing the outcome of an election would require the assistance of multiple people at each polling station, A conspiracy that big would almost certainly be big enough to leak. On the other hand, changing the outcome of an online vote, or for that matter, and vote counted by a computer, would merely require the assistance of one or two people with access to the vote counting computer.
The second problem is authentication. How do you verify that the person sitting at the computer really is the voter, and not someone impersonating the voter? You also have to make sure the person can't go to another computer and vote again, yet also make sure that multiple voters can share a common computer.
The third problem is anonymity. Right now, there's no way for anyone to verify how a given person has voted. This makes vote buying impractical, and voter coercion impossible. As soon as someone can watch over your shoulder to make sure you voted a certain way, both of these problems become possible.

Until all three of these major issues are dealt with, any sort of online voting is simply too dangerous to trust for something as important as running the country.