Electronic and Internet voting are a danger to democracy. This blog is dedicated to preserving the existing Canadian paper-based, hand-counted voting system.
Month: May 2022
Newfoundland and Labrador
April 21, 2021 – All-Party Committee Established to Modernize the Elections Act
May 26, 2021 – Members of All-Party Committee to Modernize the Elections Act Confirmed
EngageNL – Legislative Review of the Elections Act, 1991 (consultation closed January 31, 2022)
Committee members would do well to read the Internet Voting Privacy and Security Risks report from OIPC Newfoundland.
The Atlantic covers Australia’s iVote Internet voting system, as well as discussing issues with Internet voting in general.
May 20, 2022 – Lessons from the iVote meltdown by Spenser Mestel
Letting people vote from home with the click of a button is an appealing idea, …. The problem, the American Association for the Advancement of Science says, is that there’s no “evidence that any internet voting technology is safe or can be made so in the foreseeable future … All research to date demonstrates the opposite.”
There are no, zero, standards for voting technologies in Canada. It’s kind of mindboggling considering we use both computer vote counting in some provinces, as well as Internet voting in some municipalities.
Thankfully Ontario recognized this and recommended establishing standards and certification for elections technology.
That recommendation has now been implemented, in the
Advisory Committee on Standards for Voting Technologies
The committee is made up of individuals chosen by each political party in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and three other members appointed by the Chief Electoral Officer.
To date there have been three meetings:
No other material has been posted online.
If you have any questions about the committee, please call 1.855.440.4041 or email advisory.committee@elections.on.ca
For official information, please see Elections Ontario https://www.elections.on.ca/
Election day is June 2, 2022.
You can vote by special ballot, which enables you to vote by mail or drop off the special ballot, but you must register for the special ballot. You will need to upload an image of an Ontario driver’s licence or an electronic copy of a piece of ID showing your name and current residential address. The could have mentioned the Ontario Photo Card, which is the main ID alternative for people who choose not to have a driver’s license.
See https://www.elections.on.ca/en/voting-in-ontario/how-to-vote.html and the section Vote by Mail.
The deadline to apply to vote by mail is 6 PM (Eastern Time) on May 27, 2022.
You don’t actually have to send it through the mail. You can drop the special ballot off at your returning office. (But if you want to do that, be aware you can just vote in person at the returning office anyway.) You can find the returning office using https://voterinformationservice.elections.on.ca/en/election/search?mode=electoralDistrict
The interface for voter information is pretty confusing. You need to get your electoral district, then there’s a side menu that isn’t clear that it is a side menu (none of the items are in blue or underlined). You need to select “Contact Your Returning Office” to find out where your returning office is.
It’s a judgment call about uploading your ID, you have to trust IT and the organisation, but we already trust some of that IT and all of that organisation. There is no other way to vote by mail.
There is an Elections Ontario app but you cannot use it to vote online. There is no online voting in the 2022 Ontario provincial election.
You can also vote:
Ontario provincial ballots are mostly computer scanned and computer counted. For more information see previous blog post 2018 Ontario Provincial Election to use vote counting computers.
Following a much needed recommendation calling for standards and certification for elections technology (as there are currently literally none), Elections Ontario created an Advisory Committee on Standards for Voting Technologies, which from the webpage looks like it held its first meeting December 8, 2021. None of its work will apply to the current election.
Paper Vote Canada 2 