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1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America 238

Posted by Hemos from the just-like-proxyvote dept.
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.
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1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America More

1st Real Internet-Option Election in North America

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  • Paying (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:06AM (#7433323) Homepage
    Isn't too easy to buy votes here?

    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)

      by mirko ( 198274 )
      Isn't it even easier and cheaper to buy the voting system ?
      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)

        by autocracy ( 192714 )
        who does remember which slashdot poll option he choosed 3 months ago ?
        I can you insensitive clod!

      • Re:Paying (Score:2, Informative)

        by Spl0it ( 541008 )
        Here in Canada.. it is possible for weather to be the reason people don't come out and vote. If you've just spent an hour and 30minutes driving through the snow in a normal 25minute drive, you may think twice about the 15minute drive to the nearest polling station.

      • Re:Paying (Score:3, Insightful)

        by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 )
        BTW, why don't they just move their asses to the voting booth ?

        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:3, Interesting)

      by jackb_guppy ( 204733 )
      It would be easy to catch that...
      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.

    • Audits? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Arker ( 91948 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:20AM (#7433383) Homepage
      An even bigger concern I see with it is auditability. There's no paper trail, how can you verify that your vote was counted correctly? If someone cracks their database and changes the results, how would you even know? How could you possibly have any confidence in a poll without a paper trail?

      • Re:Audits? (Score:5, Informative)

        by diersing ( 679767 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:34AM (#7433458)
        I think Enron cured me of my need to validate things on paper.

        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)

        by basingwerk ( 521105 )
        I am concerned as well. I suppose you could develop a device that is writable once only, such as paper tape. Certain types of CDROM might work. The results of the voting would be written in real-time onto a serial log file on the write-once media. The results would also be written simultaneously to a standard RDBM system. This would be the operational system used to record the votes. If there were any dispute, a procedure would exist to allow the write-once media to be copied and supplied to a third party

      • Re:Audits? (Score:3, Insightful)

        by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 )
        An even bigger concern I see with it is auditability. There's no paper trail, how can you verify that your vote was counted correctly? If someone cracks their database and changes the results, how would you even know?

        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)

          by Arker ( 91948 )

          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)

            by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @10:59AM (#7434317)
            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?

            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.

            • At elections, there are people who validate the ballots from all interested parties. Something like that is bound to be noticed.

            • Re:Audits? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by mcc ( 14761 ) <amcclure@purdue.edu> on Monday November 10, 2003 @02:05PM (#7435883) Homepage
              You can register to be an election monitor. If you do this you get to sit there and watch the entire process. If they throw stuff in the trash, you see it.

              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.
              • Just don't run the checksummer from the ballot machine. Store it as a read-only exe on a USB device, plug it in, run the checksummer on the ballot program. Tada. Oh.. couldn't it just be open source? I guess that idea only works on Slashdot and not in the real world.
      • [H]ow can you verify that your vote was counted correctly?

        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
    • large banks of people sit at phones all day voting by using these bought PINs.

      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
    • Why not go around town and threaten people "your vote or your life" just like in the good old days before secret ballot.

      "Your PIN or your life" would work too.

  • Mobility Issues (Score:3, Funny)

    by Beardydog ( 716221 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:07AM (#7433329)
    I wish they'd set this up where I live. I'd like to fulfill my democratic responsibility, but there's so much good TV...

  • Good idea but... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Kr3m3Puff ( 413047 ) * <meNO@SPAMkitsonkelly.com> on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:08AM (#7433333) Homepage Journal
    While I am fully supportive of technology, the one thing that I think might be a problem is how do you keep undue influence away from the voters? We already have a huge problem that isn't addressed in people shuttling old people to the voting poles, telling them who to exactly vote for. Now you can send them directly to their homes and say even "help" them make their selection. It will be ripe for fraud. What used to be a totally private matter can now be exploited by those who want to "stuff" the ballot box.

    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!

  • One remaining barrier... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Faust7 ( 314817 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:12AM (#7433347) Homepage
    Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather.

    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)

      by swillden ( 191260 ) * <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:56AM (#7433562) Journal

      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.

    • 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.

      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)

    by Davak ( 526912 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:12AM (#7433349) Homepage
    In the last provincial election, for example, only about 55 per cent of the Ontario voters turned out to the polls.

    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
    • 55% is horrible and 50% is even worst!

      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?
      • So what would have happened on election day and the North-East went dark?

        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.
    • Sure, but compare that to the turnout numbers for other countries [idea.int]. Having only half of the elegible voters voting is a huge democratic problem. If you can't even get a majority of the population to bother to vote, something must be wrong and radical changes are needed.

      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

      • Having only half of the elegible voters voting is a huge democratic problem. If you can't even get a majority of the population to bother to vote, something must be wrong and radical changes are needed.

        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

        • 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

      • Flat comparisons are meaningless since many countries have compulsary voting. I think it's a 100 AUS fine in Australia, for instance, and other countries are probably comparable.

        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.
    • Who cares about the US?

      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.
    • I hate when an article stresses facts that are the normal to push for some radical changes.

      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.

    • US voter turnout is also right around 50%.

      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

  • Vote Early & Vote Often (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:14AM (#7433356)
    Voters, please remember to delete your browser's cookie file before voting again.

  • No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", please. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by JessLeah ( 625838 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:19AM (#7433381)
    No body: "PIN Number" is redundant. "PIN", please.
    • There's little point trying to prescribe correct language -- it only serves to annoy others and worsen your own blood pressure. And most of the time there turns out to be a reason people use language the way they do.

      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

  • I lived there... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Black Rabbit ( 236299 )
    ...and I'll tell you, if this works anything like some of the municipal services, they're fscked! Prescott-Russell is a backwater. Half the places there are still on dialup, for starters. The road and water systems are a shambles. My ex is going to have to shell out an extra $2K this year to help upgrade everything. Never a cop in sight, so the kids in their damn rice-boy POS cars run rampant on the residential streets. Meanwhile, the little guy in his white pickup who enforces municipal bylaws seems
    • ...and I'll tell you, if this works anything like some of the municipal services, they're fscked! Prescott-Russell is a backwater. Half the places there are still on dialup, for starters. The road and water systems are a shambles. My ex is going to have to shell out an extra $2K this year to help upgrade everything. Never a cop in sight, so the kids in their damn rice-boy POS cars run rampant on the residential streets. Meanwhile, the little guy in his white pickup who enforces municipal bylaws seems everyw
      • From the article:

        "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? ...or maybe I've just fed a troll...
    • Prescott-Russell is a backwater. Half the places there are still on dialup, for starters.

      Oh my god! What SAVAGES!

  • Is your vote kept secret? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by simonesteban ( 306501 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:21AM (#7433389)
    Whoever has access to the records:
    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)

    by LinuxParanoid ( 64467 ) * on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:24AM (#7433410) Homepage Journal

    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]

    • 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

      • 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 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

        • 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 would rather have the people who are informed and care enough to get off their butts to be the ones who vote, than to go to substantial efforts to get people to vote who are otherwise too lazy.


    -MDL

  • other problems (Score:3, Insightful)

    by dandelion_wine ( 625330 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:37AM (#7433478) Journal
    This is bound to increase voter "turnout" which could be a good thing, but

    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
    • Answers i) "How serious" people take voting has nothing to do with how the people vote. It has to do with how important they think their vote is, and their knowledge of the candidates. Lets look at California. They didnt vote on the Internet. Enough said. (no disrespect to arnold, but seriously)

      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

    • As for the turnout, this excerpt from the Free E-Democracy Project [free-project.org] explains it best:

      Increased Turnout

      Turnout (the number of people who vote in an election) has been steadily decreasing across most of the Western world. People are living increasingly busy lives with growing work and family commitments. Having to go to an old school or church hall to vote is difficult to fit into the day and seems anachronistic in this modern day. The younger generations, who vote even less than the rest, are probably tu

  • I could just see someone wardialing an election.

    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)

    by ajs318 ( 655362 ) <sd_resp2NO@SPAMearthshod.co.uk> on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:40AM (#7433485)
    that the fundamental basis of democracy is too important to be entrusted to any process not open to scrutiny at every stage.

    In this country there are three ways to cast a vote, besides walking to the polling station:
    1. Get a lift from a volunteer
    2. Arrange a postal vote in advance
    3. Arrange a proxy vote in advance
    The ballot papers are counted by hand, with candidates and guests in attendance. This system works. Now, you may say it is a minor inconvenience to actually have to get off your behind and cast your vote once every five years, and maybe to have to help counting up the papers or driving assorted strangers back and forth to the polling station all day. But your employer is not allowed to take any disciplinary action against you if you have to vote on works time, and when you realise that the alternative could be a fascist dictator forcing his way into power by hijacking an election, it really doesn't seem so much of an inconvenience after all. Maybe it would be appropriate to punish people who fail to vote? People have fought and died for democracy, and yet this is what we do in their memory. Of course, [GODWIN'S LAW EXEMPTION REQUEST] it doesn't help that there are politicians out there who have ideas that Adolf Hitler could only have had wet dreams about .....
    • Maybe it would be appropriate to punish people who fail to vote?

      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.

      • 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.

        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

  • Internet Voting. Phone Voting. Bad. Bad. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Afty0r ( 263037 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:49AM (#7433532) Homepage
    Someone who is not motivated enough to take an hour or so to travel to their local voting booth and vote does not care or know enough about the issues involved to make an informed and sensible choice.

    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.
    • This is a classic by Heinlein. I recommend it highly.

      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.
    • Someone who is not motivated enough to take an hour or so to travel to their local voting booth and vote does not care or know enough about the issues involved to make an informed and sensible choice.

      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)

    by deanj ( 519759 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:54AM (#7433554)
    Why are people surprised by this? Politicans that are for this sort of thing think they can use it to their advantage, to (Shock! Horrors!) cheat the system. There have been elections in the US where out and out voter fraud have occurred, (notably, Wisconsin and Missouri, and of course, Chicago), and all this will do is make it harder to detect, and harder to enforce.

    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)

    by PSaltyDS ( 467134 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:56AM (#7433564) Journal
    ...would be that this makes it easy for rednecks and CEOs to hand over their PINs to the GOP [gop.org], then blacks and union members can give theirs to the DNC [democrats.org], while the pock-faced greenpeacer at the health food store sends it to the Green party [greenparty.org]. Weeks before the election we will already know who wins based on who has the largest collection of proxy votes in hand.

    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)

      by Heisenbug ( 122836 )
      You're saying that this system will work as intended, allowing people to express their actual views more easily? If it works that way, then more power to them.

      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)

    by scorilo ( 654174 ) <zam0lx1s@yahEULERoo.com minus math_god> on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:58AM (#7433577) Homepage
    The problem I have with internet/touchtone elections for public office is that no matter how well thought out the "plan" is, evil private interests will be able to hijack it. The same applies to any public initiative that conflicts at some level with one's ability to profit (except, perhaps, in Scandinavia).

    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].

  • They've done voting by mail for many many years where my mother lives. (Rural area in Ontario). Again, no conventional ballot.

    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)

    by JediTrainer ( 314273 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @08:59AM (#7433591)
    Too bad they forgot to mention the Town of Markham [markhamvotes.ca], billed as Canada's Technology Capital (just north of Toronto). Apparently 11,700 residents registered to vote online this year in this municipal election. (note: it's not a terribly small down - with a population of 190,000)

    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)

    by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @09:07AM (#7433632) Homepage
    If you were black and lived in Florida this might just allow you to vote instead of being turned away from the voting booths.

    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~.
    • If you were black and lived in Florida this might just allow you to vote instead of being turned away from the voting booths.

      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

    • 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.

      • How about the fradulent felon lists? One county commissioner threw the list out - she found her own name among the list of convicted felons! - but other counties accepted them as having valid and thousands of people were wrongfully struck from the voter lists as convicted felons. These people where overwhelmingly black and male.

        A number of other allegations seem to have some real meat, but this is the one that's easiest to demonstrate.

    • 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!"
  • From the article:

    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)

    by Insightfill ( 554828 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @09:18AM (#7433694) Homepage
    Human female: "The sheer drama of this election has driven voter turnout to its highest level in centuries, six percent."

    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."

  • Shoot the monkey banners and pop-up ad's from candidates on the voters form......

  • Oops! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sj0 ( 472011 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @09:50AM (#7433856) Journal
    OK, it's official. Democracy is officially worthless.

    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.

  • Enumeration is a joke in Ontario (Score:3, Informative)

    by rruvin ( 583160 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @09:57AM (#7433887)
    The voting process here is one sad joke, anyway. If you're not on the voter's list, all you have to do to vote is show up at the polls with a piece of ID that shows your address. They don't even ask for proof of citizenship. The enumeration process (whereby you get on the voter's list) itself is pathetic. I received a voter's card for the provincial election (in early October), but not for the municipal election -- this is in Toronto. One person who did receive a voter's card for the municipal election, though, was my grandfather, who has been dead for over a year and who had been mentally incapacitated for years before. There've also been stories of 13 year old children and even pets being enumerated and receiving voter's cards. And if you do get a voter's card, you're absolutely golden. They let you in and let you vote without even making you show your ID to prove that you are who you say you are.
  • The pin number is okay, but what if the mail is intercepted? What I would prefer to see is a link to the Canadian Federal government's digital certificate setup that was talked about in a previous slashdot article [slashdot.org] Or better yet, a combination of the digital certificate and the PIN number, to help protect confidentiality of the votes.
  • For those of you interesting in touch-screen voting, there was a very interesting show about it on the weekly PRI (public radio) program This American Life [thislife.org], which discussed the problems with the system, including the Diebold system and the non-auditability of the new touch-screen voting machines. The audio isn't up on their website for free yet, but it should be here soon [thislife.org]. For those who can't wait, you can get audio from the show at audible.com [audible.com].

    If you don't yes listen [thislife.org] to This American Life yet, you should
  • Click here [lovefilipina.com] if you also want an extra vote when implemented in the United States. I hear the Philippino's are the best way to accomplish this task.

    If you're too damn lazy to take the effort to go to the polling place, maybe you don't deserve a vote!

  • 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)

    by xant ( 99438 ) on Monday November 10, 2003 @11:16AM (#7434466) Homepage
    By "authentication" I mean the security sense: verifying that you are who you claim to be.

    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)

    by stud9920 ( 236753 )
    Church said the new system makes democracy more accessible by removing such barriers to voting as limited mobility or even poor weather."
    Maybe a first simple step would be to hold elections on days where most people don't work, so it's not a barrier for wage slaves.

  • 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
  • I just voted in Toronto. (For Miller [thestar.com] in case you are wondering.)

    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

  • Does this have anything to do with the dilbert episode on last night?
  • A PIN number would be a Personal ID Number Number.

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