By Staff
December 1st, 2016
BURLINGTON, ON
In what was the longest city council meeting the Gazette can remember – just short of three hours, council decided that internet voting is in and ranked ballots will be looked at after the 2018 municipal election.
The Gazette has watched city council meeting start and end in less than 20 minutes – and these were not council meetings with just the one item on the agenda.
There was quite a bit of “informed” opinion put before council on the possible security problems with using the internet to cast a ballot.
Gareth Williams, a delegator to city council where it became evident that he knew a lot more than anyone on city council about internet security. They decided that convenience was more important than the safety of the vote.
The city of Toronto is having serious considerations about continuing to use the internet – the city of Waterloo has decided this isn’t something they want to do. Given that Kitchener- Waterloo is tech central for this country – there may be some wisdom we are not availing ourselves of in Burlington.
During the debate, at which delegator Gareth Williams gave as good as he got from members of Council who wanted this question to just go away. Councillor Sharman wanted the motion that was to be voted on deferred to the next Council meeting. He was supported by Councillor Taylor but that vote lost 5-2.
Councillor Sharman was the only Councillor who wanted to know more about what the real problems were with the security of the internet.
City Clerk Angela Morgan explained that she had some contracts that needed to be signed for tabulating equipment and time was running out. Sharman pushed it to a vote – lost that vote but did get a Staff Direction in place asking that they fully research the matter for the next election – that is the one after 2018.
Williams did point out that sometimes the hacking of a site is done by smart students more as a prank. He failed to remind city council that the web site students were to use to write exams on was hacked and the testing had to be cancelled. There was no back up in place.
Ranked balloting also got punted. No one on this council wants to have to face a ranked ballot. In the 2011 election thee was just the one candidate that was at any risk had the ballots cast been ranked to choose a winner.
Ranking the ballots means that if a candidate does not have more than 50% of the vote cast then the bottom ballots get distributed amongst the other candidates.
Voters would have listed their first choice, second choice and perhaps even third choice. The first person to get a pure 50% become the person elected.
Ward 2 Councillor Marianne Meed Ward was at one point a strong advocate for ranked balloting – she appears to have lost her appetite for that approach. She had very little to say on the subject at the council meeting.
The system we use now – known as first past the post – means that the person with the most votes wins – even if the total of all the other voters is the higher number.
Can some one explain how Burlington can have internet voting while Oakville does NOT have internet voting and yet they both vote for Regional Chair? This unequal access to voters seems to be obviously unacceptable. Yet that is exactly what happened last election. A Burlington resident could vote for me on the internet other areas could not.
Thanks Gareth. It seems this council is all for the latest thing (technology), except when it comes to results (ranked ballots), where they’re in the dark ages.
Forget security – after all, it’s only once every four years and we’re the ones that have to live with the results (tainted as they may be). What, me worry?
Online voting for an election at any level of government is a terrible idea. Security issues aside, this isn’t a television reality show we’re voting on. Elections need to be taken seriously. Respect the process. Elections don’t happen very often, surely people can set aside 10-20 minutes every 4 years to go and vote. For those who have mobility difficulties, there are already processes in place to help them. We need to stop catering to the rush rush rush mentality in North America. Some things are worth slowing down for, and doing right.
I like the idea of, hard copies, tangible evidence. There should be some effort involved in such an important event.
Technically I did bring up the EQAO attack three weeks ago at committee 🙂 That was actually a Distributed Denial of Service Attack (DDoS) which is definitely less sophisticated and easier to pull off than a true ‘hack’, yet still quite impactful if we’re talking about a voting system. You can even pay someone to attack a site for you, no skill required. The hacks we should really be worried about however are the ones that aren’t discovered, or discovered years after the fact.
PS please check out my new web site http://www.doesyourvotecount.ca
Gareth, thank-you for your insights into the problems with on-line voting. I do hope you continue to monitor the activities of the City in this regard; in particular, we need to address the concerns around security (only 1 vote per resident/taxpayer). As seen by the negative vote on ranked balloting, this mayor and the councillors seem more intent on protecting/saving their own sorry butts.
Gareth, is there any way to audit online voting?
Phillip – you can perform a forensic audit, however according to internationally recognized computer security expert Bruce Schneier “computer forensics investigations are not easy, and they’re not quick. And in the end, we might not even get a definitive answer.” Which is to say if the hacker has covered their tracks well enough you won’t ever know. That’s if they even bother to hack the back end system, they could just use a phishing attack to fool voters to visiting a cloned voting site, giving the attacker their credentials (PIN and Date of Birth, possibly other personal info to enable additional identity theft) and turn around and vote on their behalf for the candidate of their choosing.
Thanks for the reply, Gareth. Given these concerns and those expressed on your website, how does this mayor and council justify online voting?
Other than its the latest trendy initiative that this group seem to be so fond of, irrespective of whether the residents/taxpayers are onside?
It seems that trendiness and ease trumped security and validation of results concerns. You’ll note that the recent electoral reform committee report for the federal government recommended against electronic voting for the reasons Mr. Williams has pointed out.
Not safe enough for Canada, but safe enough for Burlington?