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1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America 238
gpmap writes "From the London Free Press: As voters across Ontario were preparing to head to the polls today to elect their municipal leaders, a technological first was quietly taking place in the easternmost reaches of the province. About 100,000 voters the counties of Prescott-Russell and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry were registered to cast their ballots online. Under a new system developed by CanVote Inc., an eastern Ontario startup company, registered voters in 11 area municipalities had the option of voting via the Internet or telephone. "I believe we're the first to do a real full Internet election in North America," said Joe Church, president of CanVote Inc. "People vote by Internet or telephone at their choice. There is no conventional ballot at all." Voters were issued a PIN number with conventional registration cards mailed to area households. Since Nov. 5, people have been logging on to a CanVote website to vote. Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather." Of course, systems like ProxyVote have been around for a while, but those are commercial issues, rather then state issues.
Paying (Score:5, Insightful)
People could just sell their PIN numbers and large banks of people sit at phones all day voting by using these bought PINs.
Re:Paying (Score:3, Insightful)
Which guarantee do the voters have that their voice and only their voices will be counted expectedly ?
BTW, why don't they just move their asses to the voting booth ?
Voting is not a formality, it is supposed to be a conscious act.
For example, you have to seriously consider a candidate's program before voting, it's not like a Slashdot poll (unless cowboy neal does politics) : who does remember which slashdot poll option he choosed 3 months ago ?
Re:Paying (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Paying (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Paying (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but if you're like most Americans you don't get Election Day off from work, and your workplace is a good 30-45 minutes away from the district where you live and am registered to vote. Going to a polling place is physically inconvenient.
For example, you have to seriously consider a candidate's program before voting
That's a suggestion, not a requirement. You don't think large blocs of voters always vote a straight p
Re:Paying (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Paying (Score:2)
Not the way I read it. The argument you refuted is if someone had said "My boss will not allow me to go to vote." That argument would have no grounds, but I don't think that's what the parent post meant.
You do not get paid for the missed time, it doesn't change your deadlines, and it doesn't change how much work you have to get done. In other words, you have to make up the time somewhere, and if you have a close deadline it'll have to be soon. Taking 5 minutes to vote
Re:Paying (Score:3, Interesting)
Caller ID.
Just have them call an 800 number and the reciever would know the number. Number gives you addresses that give you head counts. If to many votes from one location and PIN's do not match the addresses. You are found.
Internet may cause a bigger issue, because of reuse of IP's. But software that IDs the NIC's MAC would help stem that problem too.
Re:Paying (Score:2)
Re:Paying (Score:2)
Re:Paying (Score:2)
Audits? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Audits? (Score:5, Informative)
The same way databases can be altered so can paper (here I come with a bucket full of ballots and whooops, into the trash they go where I've cleverly hid a similar bucket with the results I want to be counted). If you have all faith in paper ballots please research Louisiana election fraud, apparently in the mighty south, the dead rise to vote every year - the buggers.
Re:Audits? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Audits? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've got an old Epson dot-matrix printer and a couple boxes of 5000 sheets of perforated paper I could contribute to the election if anyone's interested. There's no reason the interface couldn't be printing out the results in realtime on paper at the same time they're written to a database.
Re:Audits? (Score:3, Insightful)
Say I vote for X, and someone has compromised the system that wants Y to win. So my vote is registered for Y, both in the database and in the printout. How do I, the voter at home, know this has happened?
I don't, and your paper trail at the counting computer won't give anyone a clue either.
Re:Audits? (Score:4, Insightful)
How do you know the volunteers at the local elementary school don't take the ballot box full of punch cards out back and toss them into the incinerator? You don't.
Re:Audits? (Score:2)
Re:Audits? (Score:4, Insightful)
You could register to sit there by the e-vote server and watch the audit printout scroll by you, if you wanted. But you could not physically look inside the computer and see if someone between that piece of paper and the voter is somehow tampering with the incoming bits. You can't look at the hard drive and know that the election executable is the same executable that was certified. You can run a checksummer on the executable, perhaps, but how do you trust the checksummer?
There are perhaps situations under which electronic voting could be a good thing. But it is fundamentally incompatible with the sort of openness that is vital to a healthy election system.
Re:Audits? (Score:2)
Re:Audits? (Score:2)
While that's obviously desirable, it is nowhere near sufficient. Note the recent discussion of the Diebold-memo fiasco, in which we read the explanation for the funny declaration by the media that Bush had won Florida by a good margin, and then this was retracted the next day. It seems that in one precinct, the Diebold voting equipment did report a correct vote total, but it also sent in a second report that Gore had received -16022 votes. The t
Re:Audits? (Score:2)
Actually I'm not assuming that at all. They can all be logged separately, they can still be changed as they occur or at any time thereafter, without leaving any evidence.
Re:Audits? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Paying (Score:2)
This would be a great way to get busted for election fraud. How long do you think it would take for the elections committee to notice that the phone number for voting is being deluged by hundreds or thousands of voters who all happen to be calling from the same handful of extensions, on the same exchange, in the business center across town?
Besides, I don't see how "I'll sell you my PIN number for $50" would be any more common
Pay?! Why pay?!?! (Score:2)
"Your PIN or your life" would work too.
Re:Paying (Score:2, Interesting)
We may suspect that to already be true, but we live by the illusion that our votes count.
If we give up that important illusion, there are some not-so-mentally-stable elements of our society who might start voting with higher velocity ballots. BN
Mobility Issues (Score:3, Funny)
Good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure there is a perfect way, but at least voting in person in a private booth makes that person harder to influence. Heck, you could come up with automated "bots" that all you need to do is type in your PIN and "we promise to vote for all the right people to you." Heck, the social engineering issues are ripe for exploitation.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you need to!
Re:Good idea but... (Score:2)
How many people would cave if their boss called them into the office to ensure they voted "the right way." Illegal as hell, but in the meanwhile they're unemployed and the DA is telling them that the charges probably won't be filed since they it's a "she said, he said" situation.
How about church "voting parties" where everyone publicly "witnesses" their battle against evil in casting a public vote. People are members of churches for many
One remaining barrier... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll give him that. The one barrier it doesn't remove, however, is the economic one that provides Internet access to some but far from all. Millions of poor households receive monthly telecom discounts on just their phone lines--how/why could they shell out for even dialup service? Low-income citizens still constitute an enormous chunk of the non-voting population, which is big enough in itself.
Re:One remaining barrier... (Score:5, Informative)
The one barrier it doesn't remove, however, is the economic one that provides Internet access to some but far from all.
The article says they can vote via phone. So you only have to make sure that everyone has access to a telephone, which seems reasonable.
However, there are still problems with this scheme: vote buying/coercion and lack of verifiability being the main ones.
Re:One remaining barrier... (Score:2)
This all assumes, of course, that the reason the poor don't vote is accessability issues. I suspect it's more a problem of not havin
Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:3, Insightful)
The article really plays up out bad voter turnout is... however, US voter turnout is also right around 50%. [fairvote.org]
I hate when an article stresses facts that are the normal to push for some radical changes. I agree that non-traditional voting will be a welcomed change. However, don't suggest that Ontario needs it because their turnout is so horrible.
Davak
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:3, Insightful)
What they have done is come up with plan that can people vote without added paper work like absentity voting. It a weather a storm, and maybe a power failure (telephones tend to work).
So what would have happened on election day and the North-East went dark?
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
The same thing that happened on 9/11 (which, incidentally, was an election day in new york). All votes previous to that time are discarded, election is rescheduled for a different date.
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, voting from your home seems like an extremely bad idea and an even bigger democratic problem than low turnout. There's no way to ensure that the voter actually voted independently if they voted from home -- it makes it possible to
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
Or, it might also be a sign that half the population feels quite secure in their current form of government, and don't feel the need to. For instance, Switzerland @ 37.7%, according to your cite. Would you say that radical changes are needed there? I'd be willing to bet most Swiss don't.
Quite a few Wester
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
it might also be a sign that half the population feels quite secure in their current form of government, and don't feel the need to.
You're right on the money.
In the USA and Canada, at least, there is broad consensus on the structure of government and its relationship with the people. Ideas such as "abolition of private property" or "state sanctioning of a particular religion" are far outside the platforms of any non-fringe political movement.
We have a few parties whose platforms tend to be slightly
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
So you may get 95% turnout... but how many of those voters really give a damn about the election? I bet you'll find the same 50% or so who made some effort to learn the issues, and the rest are voting at random or worse voting based on the briefest familiarity with the issues based on the TV ads.
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
55% is low for canada, and other countries across the world
And we would like to get these numbers up, even if they are higher than american numbers.
I mean, not all countries want to be like the US, and their lack of voting and other things I dont want to bother getting into.
But lets leave the US out of this. The numbers are low for ontario, so the numbers are low.
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
Obligatory example: you can often get a knee-jerk reaction out of someone if you tell them that in the US, 40% of all sick days are taken on Monday or Friday.
Common reactions include "slacker" and "lazy", when a moment's pause will convince you that nothing's amiss.
Reason to be dubious ... (Score:2)
Well, I have my doubts about the accuracy of this claim.
In a recent election hereabouts, some time after the election, there was a news report that 30,000 uncounted votes had been discovered in one precinct. They counted them, of course, and claimed that this didn't effect the election results.
In the 2000 election, there was a similar report from Florida, but the "misplaced" boxes of votes contained around 100,000 ballots. After they were counted, there was a
Re:Improve Voter Turnout? (Score:2)
http://www.fec.gov/pages/htmlto5.htm
The chart on that page explicitly says "% T/O of VAP=Percent Turnout of Voting Age Population". That has nothing to do with the registered population. It's just (# of voters) / (approx. # of citizens over 18).
Interestingly enough, the percentage of registered voters
Vote Early & Vote Often (Score:3, Funny)
No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", please. (Score:4, Insightful)
TLAs need context (Score:2)
In this case, there are a relatively small number of possible TLAs so collisions are common. Using the TLA as an adjective -- which requires a noun for it to modify -- has become a common way of providing context for the TLA. For many people, the small amount of redundancy seems to be worth
Re:No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", plea (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", plea (Score:2)
I lived there... (Score:2, Interesting)
You didn't pay attention then... (Score:2)
Who's not paying attention? (Score:2)
"About 100,000 voters the counties of Prescott-Russell and Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry were registered to cast their ballots online."
The article specifically mentions Prescott-Russell, in eastern Ontario, just east of the city of Ottawa. Where the hell did you get Toronto out of that?
Re:I lived there... (Score:2)
Oh my god! What SAVAGES!
Is your vote kept secret? (Score:3, Interesting)
pin xxx -> voted for yyy and pin xxx -> is person zzz, could apply the transitive property: person zzz -> voted for yyy.
At least with low technology (cross on paper), your vote is mixed with several others.
Issues with online voting... (Score:5, Interesting)
One subtle problem with online voting is that it's much easier for a third-party to coerce your vote and to check that you voted "correctly". The third-party (an employer, union official, local mob boss, etc) can "encourage" you to make sure you vote at an online facility where they are watching... and there goes the privacy of the polling place and the anonymity of the ballot box.
Of course, in earlier times this was recognized as an issue with absentee voting. The solution that traditional voting systems adopted was to allow the voter to vote in person later at a real polling place, and that vote, (presumably more free of coercion), would invalidate their earlier vote.
I wonder if CanVote provided a similar "vote override" option for Ontario citizens? A polling place vote should always override an alternative-mechanism vote. I hope in the move to online voting we don't lose the non-obvious protections that have been added to our current electoral system over time.
--LP, a programmer who also supports voter-verified paper trails [verifiedvoting.org]
Re:Issues with online voting... (Score:3, Insightful)
That also raises the interesting idea of being able to override your own vote later because you've changed your mind (seen a new broadcast debate, for example). You could thus have a constant online poll during the election period which monitors how the campaign is going.
And from there, why not have that system running permanently? Direct democracy in action - do something stoopid one day, get instantly voted out of office.
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians h
Re:Issues with online voting... (Score:2)
Assuming you can guarantee security, integrity etc. But it would mean politicians had no choice other than to act according to the public's views.
Ah yes, mob rule. That's always healthy.
Nominally, our elected officials are chosen to act as agents to represent our needs and views. They are supposed to do the work of government full time. They ofte
Re:Issues with online voting... (Score:2)
Direct democracy does not necessarily equate to mob rule. Look at Switzerland for an example; referenda on many, many issues. As far as I can tell, Switzerland has yet to degenerate...
What you're referring to is the problem of how to stop knee-jerk reactions, not to direct democracy being impossible in itself. More interesting is your "whim of the majority" argument; every five years (or four/six in the US's case) government alters upon exactly that. Nobody gets a chance to speak up again for another half-
I perfer lower turnouts (Score:2, Insightful)
-MDL
other problems (Score:3, Insightful)
i) how seriously will people take such a vote? Maybe a little vetting via bad weather and a walk to the local school is not such a bad thing, and
ii) how will this new, higher-percentage of the voting public reflect the public at large? Yes, there are terminals available at many public librairies, but it doesn't take a sociologist to realize that there's still going to be a class bias perpetuated if having a computer means easy access to the vote.
A higher percentage of voters is no good if only the needs of some groups in society are being reflected.
Just my $.02
Re:other problems (Score:2)
ii) Anyone can use a pay-phone or public internet. I know in Ontario every library has 5-500 internet accessable computers, and on election day they could reserve them for elections.
Democracy is based on a
Re:other problems (Score:2)
As for the turnout, this excerpt from the Free E-Democracy Project [free-project.org] explains it best:
Is there anything on the security of the system (Score:2)
There seem to be other problems as well. If you can vote at home you can record the process as proof you voted a particular way. This would allow you to sell your vote.
What kind of internet setup are they using ? I hope its not Windows and IIS running ASP.
Then there is the whole papertrail issue on the back end.
They really don't seem to have addressed the issues of why there are polling places instead of return mail for voting.
I still state my position (Score:5, Insightful)
In this country there are three ways to cast a vote, besides walking to the polling station:
Re:I still state my position (Score:2)
Absolutely not. The right to abstain is as important as the right to choose one of the listed candidates. If you force people to pick one of the listed office-seekers when none of them represent that person's beliefs, you might as well hold a gun to their head and make them choose a particular candidate.
Re:I still state my position (Score:2)
Simple fix to your issue -- add a value of "abstain". Thus if there is no acceptable candidate, you effectivly don't vote. But your abstention is tallied and is not just a "I didn't feel like voting" it's a "Hey dumb-ass you didn't give me an acceptable candidate to vote for."
This could also lead to no cand
Re:I still state my position (Score:2)
While I try very hard to not agree with this statement, I have to admit it's true, but the right to vote is granted to every (almost) US citizen. Once we start limiting those that can vote, we are just one step further along the road to Fascism.
Unfortunately our republican overlords don't seem to intereste
Internet Voting. Phone Voting. Bad. Bad. (Score:3, Insightful)
Having 90% of the population vote when only 40% of the population researches, interrogates and cares only means you'll have 50% of pseudo random "noise" votes drowning out the informed, important votes.
Revolt In 2100 (Score:2)
The plot deals with precisely the fact that voters were becoming apathetic and turnout was dropping. Unlike your scenario the people that cared were all fundamentalist christians who elected their prophet to power.
Re:Internet Voting. Phone Voting. Bad. Bad. (Score:2)
I'm in Toronto and and we're having our municipal elections today. There are three polling stations within 10 minutes' walk from my house (although I have been assigned to the nearest one, about 4 minutes away).
Also, all candidates enlist scores of volunteers to drive anyone who doesn't have a ride to their
What are people surprised by this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait until someone breaks into this system and turns an election on it's ear... You'll see some mighty fast backpedaling to the old system.
The cynical view... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the way proxy votes come out in business, there is rarely any suspense about how it will come out because everyone knows before hand who has the blocks of proxy votes needed. Also, you would expect a new PIN for each election, but if you signed up for the right program, each of your PINs could be delivered straight to the party headquarters of your choice.
Many states [valottery.com] with lotteries already do something like this. Sign up and have your same favorite numbers played every week and charged against your credit card. Voluntary taxation made easy.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
That's not cynical. (Score:3, Insightful)
The cynical view is, this will allow people to give their PINs to the local strongman in exchange for fat loot.
not news (Score:3, Informative)
Private elections are another matter. In the same Canada, Mountain Co-op [www.mec.ca] has been running these elections for a while. Whenever you buy some mountain gear (or anything for that matter) from them, you become a member of the co-op. As such, you have a say in how the system is run and you get to elect the board of directors. Election implementation is overseen by PWC or E&Y, and you get a package in the mail containg the election information [www.mec.ca].
Not having a physical ballot site is nothing new. (Score:2)
Granted, the entire field of candidates for this election is 6 people, running for 3 positions, the rest were acclaimed.
That's nice (Score:5, Informative)
I was sent the information on how to vote online, but I just don't trust it, what with no paper trail. The elections are today, and I plan on going and filling in my old-fashioned "x in the circle" paper ballot.
'Course the mayor (Don Cousens) is a shoe-in. He's been mayor since forever and there are no viable alternative candidates. Don doesn't seem to be even bothering advertising his platform much - all I've seen is about one or two election signs around town. All the action is between the city council or the regional council positions.
Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course there might be other ways of eliminating votes from inappropriate people - "His name is Leroy, just drop the vote into the bit bucket~.
Re:Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:2)
As an added bonus if you know about computers you may be able to vote several times.
I'm afraid of these systems because there are unscrupulous politicians and groups in both parties that DO engage in dirty tricks and outright voter fraud. Just look at the instances in Florida that you bring up. I do not doubt that in some of those instances there really was a concerted effort by
Re:Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:3, Informative)
If you were black and lived in Florida this might just allow you to vote instead of being turned away from the voting booths
Provide one single, actual instance, please.
What's that? None? That's what I thought.
Re:Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:2)
A number of other allegations seem to have some real meat, but this is the one that's easiest to demonstrate.
Re:Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:3, Insightful)
If people in Florida couldn't figure out a damn punch card, then I'd like to make a wager with you whether they can navigate phone menus or a website!
"Oh drat, I meant to press two!"
Hysterical Slashdotters (Score:2)
Re:Would this be useful in Florida? (Score:2)
(Lotsa of mindless blather inserted since Slashdot's latest "new & improved" spam filters apparently believe that nobody could add a useful one line comment.
blah, blah, blah and more blah)
Not so democratics as it seems (Score:2, Insightful)
Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather
This may work in the US, but in another countries this doesn't seems fair. In my country (Argentina) postal services sucks, so probabily you won't get the card/pin by standard mail. There are a lot of people with outdated address on the gov' databases. So even if the cards are mailed, they will arrive to a different place. And the election day here is m
Oblig. Futurama Quote... (Score:5, Funny)
Morbo: "Exit poll show evil underdog Richard Nixon trailing with estimated zero votes."
Human female: "The time is 7:59 and the robot polls are now opening." (short pause) "And robot votes are now in. Nixon has won."
Morbo: "Morbo congratulates our gargantuan cyborg president. May death come quickly to his enemies."
I can see it now... (Score:2)
Oops! (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, I know how the internet works, and that's more than enough to convince me that nothing as important as voting should be done through it.
Re:Oops! (Score:2)
Enumeration is a joke in Ontario (Score:3, Informative)
Bzzt. The Arizona Democrats did this in 2000. (Score:2)
Combine this with the digital certificates (Score:2)
Mostly On, Slightly Off-Topic (Score:2)
If you don't yes listen [thislife.org] to This American Life yet, you should
I'm gonna get me 2 votes when this comes to USA (Score:2, Insightful)
If you're too damn lazy to take the effort to go to the polling place, maybe you don't deserve a vote!
I'm in CA and I voted on the internet... (Score:2)
Oh, wait, I'm California. Oops. Hope the Canadians don't mind living with my decisions!
Sounds like a major authentication hassle (Score:3, Insightful)
This is not the only issue with online voting (the slashhorde has already pointed out that there is a privacy concern), but it is, in my opinion, the most important one. They mail you the PIN number. This means your vote is only as secure as the postal service. How secure is that? Not very damn secure at all.
Never mind that someone else could pilfer your mail and therefore your constitutional rights, someone in your own household could do it. Imagine your 10-year-old son deciding to get back at you by voting Republican (or whatever the Canadian equivalent is).
Absentee ballots also have this issue, but at least those have a physical signature. Until we all have smart cards with biometrics to use for identification, any such system will have a major authentication problem.
barriers (Score:2, Insightful)
Bad Idea for US (Score:2)
This country runs on apathy. High turnout may sound all warm and fuzzy, but what is more important than turnout is smart, researched, and educated voting.
People that are too damn lazy to even go to polls or vote by mail are not the type of people that you want voting in the first place.
Witold
www.witold.org
Vote scanners (Score:2)
I was interested to see they had a hybrid system. You marked your vote on paper but then its run thru a scanner which presumably counts the votes. So the second the polls close they'll know the results. But the old style ballots are around for recounts.
They scanned thru one lady's ballot and the machine gave an error. The election official looked at the ballot with her and told her had mistakenly voted for two people for mayor - duh. She
Familiar (Score:2)
Just a pet peeve of mine but... (Score:2)
Re:In other news... (Score:2)
Paris is an existing town, you can find it on a map about 70km east of London. In both cases founded by immigrants.