E-voting may be in Windsor -- soon

By Jennifer Hoegg

The Hants Journal/NovaNewsNow.com

Imagine simply picking up a phone or logging on to the Internet to cast your ballot. No travel to a polling station, no line-ups, no waiting. If a staff report is adopted, Windsor voters may have the choice of voting electronically in 2008.

It is too early to know if town council will adopt electronic voting before October’s poll, but staff is recommending the option.

Dartmouth’s Intelivote Systems presented the concept to council’s Committee of the Whole (COW) March 11. Vice president marketing Mike Pollard promised that his company’s services could increase voter turnout, while making voting day easier for staff and candidates.

If hired, Intelivote would be involved in producing, updating and managing Windsor’s electoral roll and would issue a personal identification number (PIN) to each registered voter. On voting day, each PIN holder would have one vote -- from phone, cell phone, Internet or in person at the polling station.

If council chooses, the system could be open between the advance and regular polling dates, allowing residents to make a choice 24 hours a day from almost anywhere in the world. Paper ballots would still be available, but the cost of paper and of staffing would be reduced.

Intelivote’s results in Ontario showed significant voter turnout increases amongst younger voters. Older voters, even seniors, also embraced e-voting because of the convenience of voting without disrupting work or family life.

Security and technical security

After his presentation, Pollard addressed councillors’ concerns about system security and technical stability. He promised auditable results and that it would be impossible to discover how an individual voted.

For added security, multiple votes from any one phone number or IP address would be investigated. Technical support would be available for staff and voters throughout the election.

After conducting elections in England and Ontario, Intelivote is pushing for the chance to run polls at home. “It is 250 years of democracy in Nova Scotia. We want to move this to the next level and give voters the chance to choose how they vote.”

Halifax Regional Municipality and Stewiacke have signed on for 2008. To secure the HRM contract, Intelivote’s system was put to the test, Pollard said. “Folks at HRM experienced the system live and did testing on the system which went very positive. Hacking, security issues, flow, how the election is set up -- all you would want to go through to make sure the system is robust.”

Pollard is also enthusiastic about the much tinier Stewiacke contract. “It tells people we can do any size election. We built this company so we could service any size municipality”

Vast improvements

Although the company is only eight years old, Intelivote employees offer decades of expertise, Pollard said in an interview last week. “We honestly feel that we’re a world leader in electronic voting.”

Several staff members were part of MTT Technologies electronic voting services in the 1990’s, including the infamous 1992 Nova Scotia Liberal leadership vote. In that election, systems crashed and the contest had to be rerun, successfully, two week later.

Experience and technological improvements prevent such an event from recurring, he notes. The MTT group ran another 50 elections successfully after 1992 and

Intelivote has conducted multiple votes in Ontario and the United Kingdom since 2000.

While 1992’s phone network was swamped by calls, today’s telecommunication networks are built to handle much larger events, like Canadian Idol votes. Computer speed and storage has also improved dramatically and become less expensive. Pollard says their current system is 100 times more powerful than what was available in 1992.

Staff favour change

Windsor CAO Louis Coutinho sees the addition of phone and Internet voting as a natural step in council’s search for greater citizen input. “From [a staff] perspective, our council has wanted to see more public participation. To give people more options, to be able to vote from home, might motivate them.”

One of the benefits of the electronic system, Coutinho added, is that it can be used for plebiscite, referenda and surveys. “You can ask any question to get an opinion.”

Deputy Mayor Andy Kirk commented after the Intelivote presentation “anything that encourages more people to vote is good.” Council has asked staff to review services offered, cost, necessary by-laws, procedures and process, recent voter turnout and how the system worked in Ontario municipalities.

Coutinho said the average voter turnout for municipal votes in Windsor has hovered around 30 percent for the past decade, with slightly higher rates in 2004’s Sunday Shopping plebiscite.

Pollard hopes Windsor will take the plunge into e-voting. “I’m excited because they have a fairly low voter turnout. I’m hopeful that if they’re correct on what the demographic and work relationship is, that we’ll push to more [turnout] than they got before, including the plebiscite”

E-voting is not a panacea. Voting is still up to individuals, Pollard said. “We make everything available to make it easy for you to vote, if you don’t, you’re not doing your civic duty”