Month: December 2016

Eurasia Review – Democracy In The 21st Century – comment

My comment on December 9, 2016 Eurasia Review article Democracy In The 21st Century – Analysis.

COMMENT

In support of Antony Hodgson’s point, British Columbia does not have Internet voting at either the provincial or municipal level. The BC Independent Panel on Internet Voting recommended against online voting in 2014 and there has been no change from Elections BC since then. A small number of First Nations communities in British Columbia have offered Internet voting. Those are small elections however, with a few hundred votes cast in total.

ENDCOMMENT

The Hill Times – Electoral reform will not happen in this Parliament – comment

Here is the comment I posted on The Hill Times article Electoral reform will not happen in this Parliament – December 12, 2016

COMMENT

“online voting would definitely entice more millennial and younger generation citizens to the polls”

With respect, no it wouldn’t. Evidence from all over the world shows that online voting doesn’t increase voter turnout. The people who vote online are the same people who would have voted offline. Youth turnout is low with online voting, because it is low with paper voting. In the PEI Plebiscite, with ten days of online voting, turnout for ages 18-24 was the lowest of any age range, at 25.47%.

Here are four reports that include the topic of online voting and turnout:

Gosse, R. (2012, December 10). FCS-12- 191 – Alternate Voting – Internet Voting. Retrieved from City of Kitchener – Laserfiche WebLink: https://lf.kitchener.ca/WebLinkExt/DocView.aspx?id=1235356&dbid=0

Archer, K., Beznosov, K., Crane, L.-A., King, V., & Morfitt, G. (2014, February 12). Recommendations Report to the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia. Retrieved from British Columbia Independent Panel on Internet Voting: https://elections.bc.ca/docs/recommendations-report.pdf (UPDATED link 2019-09-13)

Goodman, N., & Stokes, L. C. (2016, October 6). Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Empirical Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Local Elections. Retrieved from Social Science Research Network (SSRN): https://ssrn.com/abstract=2849167

McLeod, G. B. (2016, November 9). Interim Report of the Chief Electoral Officer for the 2016 Plebiscite on Democratic Renewal. Retrieved from Elections Prince Edward Island: http://www.gov.pe.ca/photos/original/elec_demrefpleb.pdf

For over a dozen references on this topic you can see https://papervotecanada2.wordpress.com/2016/12/12/online-voting-doesnt-increase-turnout/

ENDCOMMENT

Online voting doesn’t increase turnout

I wish I didn’t have to say this again and again, but I do. Here’s what I wrote for the New Brunswick consultation

The City of Kitchener’s 2012 report on Internet voting finds that “There is clear evidence that, regardless of geography internet voting does not attract younger voters.” (Gosse, 2012) Similarly, the 2014 BC Independent Panel on Internet Voting finds in their report that “research suggests that Internet voting does not generally cause nonvoters to vote. Instead, Internet voting is mostly used as a tool of convenience for individuals who have already decided to vote.” (Archer, Beznosov, Crane, King, & Morfitt, 2014)

The paper “Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Empirical Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Local Elections” by Nichole Goodman and Leah Stokes reviews extensive evidence from online voting in Ontario municipalities and finds that “internet voting is unlikely to solve the low turnout crisis”. (Goodman & Stokes, 2016) A recent demonstration of the reality of Internet voting turnout was the 2016 Prince Edward Island Plebiscite on Democratic Renewal which had 10 days of online voting in addition to two days of in-person voting. Not only was the overall turnout low at 36.5%, but the turnout for ages 18-24 was the lowest of any age range, at 25.47%. (McLeod, 2016)

But there’s more, much more than that.
Halifax has online voting. Turnout dropped by more than 10,000 in the 2016 Halifax election (Internet Archive).

In the last municipal election in 2012, 66,272 people voted by e-vote and phone (22.2 per cent of the entire vote). At the close of e-voting Thursday, the HRM registered 55,788 electronic and telephone votes.

Evidence again and again shows that online voting does not increase participation, by youth or by any voting group. All that happens is that (mostly middle-aged) people who would have voted at a polling station anyway vote online.
Evidence:

Young ontario voters (aged 18-24) more likely to use paper ballots than internet voting

above from Internet Voting Project Twitter – https://twitter.com/ivotingproject/status/660551650000699392 – 31 October 2015

3.100 Advocates also cite current Estonian and Swiss internet voting as improving equality and voter turnout, convenience and timely vote counting. However, these examples have either been consistently undermined in security analyses (in the case of Estonia) or have not been proven in a general election (in the case of Switzerland).

above from Parliament of Australia – Inquiry into and report on all aspects of the conduct of the 2013 Federal Election and matters related thereto Second Interim Report Chapter 3: National and international experience – Committee Comments
For more on Estonian Internet voting, see subsequent blog post (in legacy blog) Estonian Internet voting and turnout myths.

there was no impact on turnout, which actually decreased very slightly

above from UK Electoral Commission – Official report on internet voting pilot at Rushmoor elections published (Internet Archive) – ~~Official report on internet voting pilot at Rushmoor elections published~~ – June 3, 2008

Internet voting is seen by some as a potential solution to this trend of declining voter turnout. … While there have been some Internet voting elections where voter turnout has increased, when other factors such as the apparent closeness of the race and interest in particular contests (e.g., a mayoral election without an incumbent) are taken into consideration, research suggests that Internet voting does not generally cause non-voters to vote. Instead, Internet voting is mostly used as a tool of convenience for individuals who have already decided to vote.

above from BC Independent Panel on Internet Voting report (PDF) page 12 – February 2014

However, it said, there was no evidence that the trial led to a rise in the overall number of people voting nor that it mobilised new groups, such as young people, to vote.

above from BBC – E-voting experiments end in Norway amid security fears – 27 June 2014

At best, [Michael] McGregor said, the evidence is mixed. He sees internet voting as no different than advanced polls in that “it’s not increasing turnout, it’s just people who are already voting.”
…
[Nicole] Goodman’s data from municipal elections in the Toronto-area municipality of Markham, which has had internet voting since 2003, found that “those aged 35–64 are the strongest internet voting users in all election years and suggest that online ballots are growing in popularity among older voters while use is waning among younger voters.”

above from CBC News – Why hi-tech voting has low priority for Canadian elections – September 9, 2015

Statistics indicate that internet voting does not increase voter turnout or youth participation.

above from City of Mississauga report on Internet Voting – Potential enhancements for the 2018 Municipal Election: Internet Voting, Ranked Choice Elections and Vote Anywhere. (PDF) – June 20, 2016

Some content above adapted from legacy blog post evidence about online voting (particularly turnout).

In the Special Committee on Electoral Reform report Strengthening Democracy in Canada, they quote Harold Jansen

Harold Jansen posited that introducing online voting would not have any appreciable impact on voter turnout:

I also am suspicious of how great the gains would be in terms of voter turnout. I think most of the issues lie around motivation, not opportunity. I’m suspicious of a lot of things when people say on surveys, “Oh, I was too busy to vote”. Often, it just means, “There are other things more important to me than voting.” Okay, citizens can make those kinds of determinations. Voting is not that onerous, and I think Elections Canada has done a pretty good job in the last 20 years of improving the accessibility of the vote. There are more ways to vote than ever before.

I don’t think we should expect realistically huge gains in voter turnout. I don’t think that should be a motivation. It would be more convenient for some people, but these are people who would likely vote anyway. What I found was that the people most likely to say they were very likely to cast a vote in our survey were people who had already voted. They would just switch to doing it online.⁴¹²

⁴¹²ERRE, Evidence, 1st Session, 42nd Parliament, 22 August 2016, 2005 (Harold Jansen).

More on Marc Mayrand and electronic voting in Canada

Outgoing Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand wants to explore the use of electronic technology in the polling place for Canadian national elections. It’s not entirely clear what kind of technology. In his recommendations he points to the use of vote counting computers. Speaking to CBC’s The House on December 2, 2016, starting at 09:40 in, he speaks more generally about electronic voting.

I think the next step for Elections Canada is to bring technology at the polls. … If we could automate the processes at the polls, there would be fewer errors. … we also need to think about a form of electronic voting. Again technology is changing quickly, there’s new [technologies] that are more robust from a point of view of integrity and security and auditability, so we need to explore those [technologies] and begin at some point testing it.

He also spoke about this in an earlier interview, again on CBC’s The House, on September 30, 2016, starting basically at the beginning (0:07 in).

I think we need to increase our reliance on technology. Our system is entirely paper-based, it’s entirely manual, it’s very rigid, and it’s not scalable. … We want to get rid of the paper as much as we can. We want to automate processes, forms… filling those paper forms is also often a source of errors.

Right now our entire voting process fits on a single page. That’s not rigid, that’s beautiful code.

(Slide from my presentation to Shopify about Internet voting.)

The outgoing Chief Electoral Officer is recommending we replace that one nationwide standard process with counting processes, including vote counting computers, as determined solely by the Chief Electoral Officer. I think this would be a major step backwards for Canada’s elections.

It’s hard to know how the recommendation about the use of technology at the polling places is being received, because other than the first meeting, all 9 of the subsequent meetings on the topic to date at the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs (PROC) were closed (in camera; a meeting with a lock symbol).

These discussions are taking place in an environment where almost no one involved is a technology expert, let alone a voting technology expert, and where there has been no broad discussion in the media about electronic voting. The consultation process associated with electoral reform did ask about electronic voting (despite not having a clear mandate to do so), but provided no briefing or even definition of electronic voting to provide context for discussions.

So basically as usual we’re making decisions about technology without involvement of technology experts, and without any information provided either from the government or by the media.

It is not clear how the public can provide input into the discussions, other than by contacting PROC.

PROC@parl.gc.ca

(“Yesterday” in the image below means December 6, 2016.)