Paper Vote Canada

Nathan Cullen spoke about the NDP's report on its electoral reform consultations.  You can watch on CPAC video.  The segment about online voting runs from 16:20 to 16:50 in "Voting Reform: News Conference - Nathan Cullen".

Let me take a couple of other things that I've had my mind changed on.  Going into this process I was quite enthusiastic about online voting - I thought you know, Canadians bank online, shop online, some date online, why not vote online?  The testimony we've gotten back from experts in the information technology field has put a chill on the committee, if I... - I don't want to speak for the whole committee, but - we've had many conversations about it, the testimony's been devastating towards the idea of online, just on security levels, not so much on access.

(Manual transcript by me from the video.)

Labels: #ERRE, internet voting, links to video, online voting

The ERRE Special Committee on Electoral Reform has a page that has MP reports ("Members Reports"), Briefs submitted by Canadians, a list of Witnesses including direct links to their testimony (click on the microphone icon), and Meetings.

It's a very useful page, but unfortunately kind of buried unless you know about it.

You can find it at

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Committees/en/ERRE/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=9013025

Labels: #ERRE, Electoral Reform

I have submitted my brief to the committee, it's a 9-page document that comes in just under 3000 words.  I wanted to include more references but I ran out of space.

UPDATE 2016-10-26: My brief is now available on the committee website, in English and translated into French « Évaluation du vote électronique et en ligne dans le cadre des élections nationales au Canada » .
ENDUPDATE

You can find the PDF at

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1dTIjUvkfsDMTZtMkFjNmVuY1k

Where you can download by clicking on the down arrow in the upper right of the screen.
Or you can see the embedded version below.

Labels: #ERRE, internet voting, online voting

Presentation by Dr. Barbara Simons to Canadian ERRE Special Committee on Electoral Reform, meeting 32, panel 3, in Vancouver on September 28, 2016.  Provided by permission of Dr. Simons.

Audio is available from ParlVu.  Panel 3 with Dr. Simons starts at 21:31:25.
Her presentation begins at 21:33:25 and ends at 21:39:32.  The panel ends at 22:54:50.

I tried to use the built-in download-and-clip tool to get a segment of the audio but it didn't work for me.

UPDATE 2016-10-18:

Presentation

Transcript of Dr. Simons' presentaton (from OpenParliament.ca)

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today about a critical issue: the fundamental insecurity of all currently available Internet voting systems. If this were a medical hearing to determine whether to approve a new drug for human consumption, safety would be paramount. A drug that is likely to result in serious injury to patients would be rejected, no matter how many people wanted to use it. Internet voting is like a drug we are considering for the country.

If there is even a small chance that Internet voting might result in our elections being hacked, it doesn't matter how many people want it. If Internet voting puts our elections at risk—and it does—we must reject it until such time as it can be proven secure.

I have brought copies of the “Computer Technologists' Statement on Internet Voting”, which unfortunately hasn't been translated, so I guess I can't distribute them, but they will be made available later and I could address the recommendations made in that statement during the question period. It was signed by prominent computer science researchers from major universities throughout the United States. I think it's a fair statement to say that computer security experts are basically in total agreement that we should not have Internet voting at this time, anywhere.

The title of my talk is, “Internet Voting: Making Elections Hackable”. As you know, there are five principles for this hearing, one of which is integrity. Australia did an assessment of Internet voting and there's a quote from the Honourable Tony Smith, who was chair of the joint standing committee on electoral matters in Australia, which says, “it is clear to me...that Australia is not in a position to introduce any large-scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity.”

Those of you who have copies of my slides see that the next slide has a list of a large number of sites that have been hacked, starting with Yahoo, where half a billion users' accounts were hacked into, and that includes a lot of Canadians. It also includes, in Canada, the Department of Finance, the Treasury Board Secretariat, Defence Research and Development Canada, the National Research Council, The Ottawa Hospital, and the University of Calgary. In the United States it includes the Democratic National Committee, as I'm sure you've heard, the Office of Personnel Management, the Pentagon emails, the FBI, the White House, the U.S. State Department, Google, AOL, Symantec, and so on and so forth.

A question that I hope this committee will ask itself is, what will happen if we take up Internet voting in this country, and months after a government is seated it is discovered that the election has been hacked? This is not an unrealistic scenario. The Yahoo breach started in 2014 and it was just uncovered. The Democratic National Committee breach occurred months before it was discovered. It typically takes months to discover a breach after it has occurred. You can replace money that's stolen from online bank accounts—and by the way, millions and millions of dollars are stolen annually from online bank accounts—but you cannot replace votes.

Toronto did a security analysis of three systems that were submitted there for consideration. The conclusion of the security analysis was that no proposal provides adequate protection against the risks inherent in Internet voting. Their recommendation was that the city not proceed with Internet voting in upcoming municipal elections.

Quebec has had a moratorium on electronic voting since 2005.

British Columbia had a panel that investigated Internet voting. Their conclusion was, first of all, non-voters usually don't vote over the Internet. It's used primarily as a tool for voters who have already decided to vote, mostly middle-age voters. It's least popular among young people, and that reflects traditional voter turnout. Their recommendation is to not implement Internet voting for either local or provincial government elections at this time.

Estonia is often brought up as an example of a country that has successfully conducted Internet voting. Most people don't know that in 2014, an independent group of international experts performed a security evaluation of the Estonian system. They found that it's vulnerable to state-level attackers who could compromise the secret ballot, disrupt elections, or cast doubt on the fairness of the results, and it is vulnerable to a range of attacks, including vote-stealing malware on the voter's machine, and they recommended that Internet voting be halted. Unfortunately, in Estonia, it has not been.

Basically, Washington, D.C., was considering Internet voting for real elections in the 2010 mid-term. They opened it up two weeks beforehand to allow anyone from anywhere to try to hack into the system. This is the only time this has been done. Two weeks before, it was taken over within 36 hours by a team from the University of Michigan. They could change already cast and future ballots, and they could reveal the voters' secret ballots. They installed the University of Michigan fight song as their calling card, so it would start playing 15 seconds after voting in this sample election, which was quite interesting for those of us who didn't know they had broken in. They also discovered probes coming from China and Iran, and they protected the system from these probes.

I don't think that China and Iran were actually trying to break into a pilot system. It wasn't a real election; it was a toy election. But these probes are always on the Internet, and they are always trying to break in. As I said, no other vendor has allowed such a test because, I believe, they know that their systems would be vulnerable. In fact, the only kind of real-life test you can do is to let anyone from anywhere try to break in, because that's what reality is.

Thank you.

Q&A

Q - Gérard Deltell:  Madam Simons, if we change the way we elect our people, we are open to discussion, but at the end of the day, the people shall decide by a referendum. It's not up to parties and politicians because we are in a conflict of interest with regard to the decision.

What do you think about that?

A - Barbara Simons:  I think that a referendum may be fine for certain issues, but when it's a heavily technological issue like Internet voting, you really need to listen to the experts. In fact, when I first heard about Internet voting, I thought it was a great idea. I really wanted to do it, and most of my colleagues—almost all of us are geeks, I should say. Notice that I'm here with this. I mean, I live on a computer. I spend all day long on the computer. I love my computer. But I don't want to vote on my computer, not in a major election.

Look at what's happening in the United States right now, where the Democratic Party is terrified that the election is going to be rigged by Russia. Now, I'm not saying that's going to happen, but the very fact that people are even contemplating that idea is very disturbing.

I was in Estonia a few years ago, at the invitation of the Estonian Centre Party, which is the second-largest party in Estonia, and remember, as I said in my talk, people hold up Estonia as the model of Internet voting in a country.

They invited me there because they are convinced that their elections are being rigged. They are the second-largest party, and if you look at who votes over the Internet, members of their party do not.... At least they don't get votes over the Internet very much. Most of their votes come from paper ballots, because Estonia has both paper ballots and Internet voting. They wanted me to go there and tell them that the election was rigged. I couldn't do that, because there's no way to know.

That's one of the terrifying things of Internet voting. You could have malware, election-rigging malware, on the voter's machine which could change the vote before it goes out over the Internet. What you see on your screen is not necessarily what goes out, because there are different components in a computer. It could change what goes out and the voter would never know.

That means that when you get the electronic ballots at the other end, these bits, you cannot know if they accurately represent the will of the voters, and therefore, you cannot do a recount. I could not therefore tell members of the Estonian Centre Party that the election was rigged, nor could I tell them that it was not rigged.

I think that is a very unhealthy situation for a democracy.

Q - Gabriel Ste-Marie: I am going to start by addressing you, Ms. Simons.

Thank you for coming and warning us against electronic voting. The points you raised are disturbing. As you said, in the American election campaign, Russian computer scientists got hold of emails belonging to the woman who is a candidate for the office of president of the United States. In Canada, it would be unthinkable to realize, a year or two after an election, that the entire thing had been tampered with by foreign interests and that this had even put, who knows, the Bloc Québécois in power. That would be hard to believe, but in any event, we have to be careful.

What is good about our system is that we have a little piece of paper and a little pencil, we mark an X and we put the paper in the box, so it can be counted and examined.

I have a concern about electronic voting. The fact that the person voting would not be alone in a booth concerns me. We could have vote-buying, negative influence, fear, and so on. In your eyes, do these factors also amount to obstacles to electronic voting?

A - Barbara Simons: I think when you talk about the person not being alone with Internet voting, that's an issue for any kind of remote voting. It's the same for voting by mail. With Internet voting, you have to worry about voter coercion and vote buying and selling. That's of concern to me. I think remote voting should be held to a minimum. There are people who have to do it because they are not well, or they are away and they have to vote remotely, but generally speaking, it shouldn't be, as it is in many parts of the United States, made available to everybody. My experience in Canada is that it isn't made available to everybody. It's not that easy, and I think that's a good thing.

You talked about the paper ballots. I was a poll worker in a provincial election here, and I thought the way the election was run was wonderful. I've also worked on an election in the United States, and believe me, it's done much better in Canada. It really is.

One of the things that's nice about the way it's done in Canada is that when the election was over, we all tabulated the ballots. There were all these rules. They had to come out right. There was a lot of double-checking and triple-checking, and nobody could leave until it all worked. There was one table that hadn't quite...they were off by one, and the rest of us were hungry, but we couldn't leave until they finally worked it out. I thought it was wonderful.

Another thing I hope you will keep in mind when you think about moving to another form of voting is whether you can retain this spirit, this counting locally, and this being able to check locally and have observers from all the parties who can look at what's going on. If you move to a complicated form of voting, then you're going to have to use computers, and you won't be able to see what's going on inside the computers. You'll be dependent on the software, which could have software bugs or it could have malware.

Q - John Aldag: Dr. Simons, I want to start the questioning with you.

I found the information you provided fascinating. As Mr. Cullen had noted when we started, it seemed that online voting could be a solution to a lot of our problems, including accessibility. You've just taken that and thrown it in the trash can for me. It causes me some concern. Is there any hope for any application down the road?

One of the things we've been asked to look at is increasing accessibility and voter participation. I know from my own experience during my first election in October, I did have people who were unable to make it to the polling booth, and Elections Canada did some great work to make their votes accessible. I thought there could be some great opportunities for those who are homebound dealing with disabilities.

Then we had a witness from the Canadian National Institute for the Blind who spoke with us more recently. Her testimony really touched me. She talked about never having been able to have a secret ballot. One of the many messages I got from her is that many persons with disabilities, particularly visual disabilities, have technology that they work with at home that uses oral prompts and other things to help them. I thought maybe we need to go with a limited-reach online voting. We heard that from our Chief Electoral Officer, to maybe go small and do some test populations.

Until you spoke, I was hoping that we could convince Elections Canada to start with a population such as those with sight disabilities and pilot something, but with what you're saying, the risks are so high.

Would you advise us and direct us away from even going that far, because of the vulnerabilities?

A - Barbara Simons: There are safer alternatives.

In the United States there's been a lot of concern about voters in the military overseas, because it takes a long time, and about people with disabilities. What's done there, and I think this could be done in Canada, is that you can make the blank ballot available online. In the U.S. for military voters, by law it's made available at least 45 days in advance of the election. They download the ballot, print it out, fill it out, and mail it in.

Now, with voters with disabilities, you could download the ballot onto the computer, and they could use their tools to vote. One thing you need to be careful about is that when that happens, you don't want their computer communicating with the main server, because that's basically Internet voting again, and you have lots of issues, such as the secret ballot. But they can download it onto their computer, disconnect from the Internet, and then fill it out locally so that they can take advantage of the tools they have. A blind voter can fill it out, print it out, and then mail it in by postal mail. Again, they can use the tools, and if it's done enough in advance, they don't have to worry about the time for the postal mail.

Q - John Aldag: It's a wonderful suggestion, very practical.

What else have you encountered in this area of research that you can get to us while we have access to your expertise, before the chair cuts me off? Are there any other gems you can give us that will help us reach out to some of these populations that have been disenfranchised from our voting system?

A - Barbara Simons:  know there's been concern among first nations. I've heard some testimony in another event where a first nation person was strongly advocating for Internet voting.

Again, I think it does a disservice to voters with disabilities, to first nations, to anybody, to provide them with a tool that is fundamentally insecure. We owe it to them when we provide them with alternatives to make sure those alternatives are secure.

That would be my recommendation.

Comment - Scott Reid: I don't have any questions for you, Dr. Simons, and that's because you've resolved matters in my mind. I'm now firmly committed to not moving to electronic voting. In fact, I'm completely paranoid. That was very convincing.

Q - Sherry Romanado: Dr. Simons, like my colleagues, I have to say that if we weren't already unsure about Internet voting, your testimony this evening scared some of us. I'll add to this, so please forgive my little sidebar.

In addition to sitting on the committee for electoral reform, I also sit on the Standing Committee on National Defence. We've just completed part of a study on the defence of North America, specifically on aerial readiness. We spent some time at NORAD during this study, where we heard about the emerging threats, conventional and asymmetrical attacks, and specifically, cyber-threats and cyber-attacks here in Canada.

You brought up a point that I hadn't thought of. We heard that there was an increase in the potential for cyber-attacks in Canada, and in fact Canada is now looking at a consultation to upgrade our national cybersecurity policy. You mentioned the actual machines to do the count, and I thought that was interesting, because I had only heard about the e-voting or online voting. You mentioned that whatever system we decide to put into place, if there are requirements for algorithms or calculations coming out of whatever we choose, those are also susceptible to cyber-attack.

For instance, it's simple to count the ballots—and I think most of us have volunteered at elections where you get to count the ballots—but if we actually have a system where we have to run these ballots or votes through a machine for it to then do the calculations, whether it be a proportional system or whatever system we choose, those too are susceptible to attack.

Could you elaborate a bit on that? I hadn't thought of that portion.

A - Barbara Simons: By the way, before I do that, here's one other thing to help make you more paranoid with regard to Internet voting. Think about ransomware and how that could be applied to Internet voting.

Getting back to your question, in terms of being subject to cyber-attack, that would depend on whether or not it has access to the Internet. I'm not saying that introducing computers into the election process necessarily would make them vulnerable to cyber-attack. What I'm saying is that when you bring in the computers, you are dependent on the computers. You're dependent on the algorithm for counting the votes.

In the case of some of these systems, that can be complicated. You have to be careful that the algorithm is correct, that the code was written correctly, and that no bad person has gotten their hands on those machines and changed the software to rig the election in some way. You can't really open up the machine and look at it the way you can pieces of paper. You just have to be more careful. There are risks whenever you introduce computers into the system.

It's kind of funny, because the people who are raising the alarm, by and large, are the computer scientists, and when I first started this, we were being told by people who really didn't know anything about computers that we were Luddites to talk about these issues.

I'm just counselling you that if we move to a very complicated system that can't be tabulated manually, it means that computers will have to come in. That means that in some sense we're going to be outsourcing the election to the vendors. Even if it's homegrown software, you still are dependent on the people who write the software and on the algorithms being correct. You introduce an element of risk, and you also don't have the transparency that our elections currently have, and I think that transparency is really a wonderful thing.

There are other forms of voting that aren't first-past-the-post systems where you can manually count, so I'm not taking a position on first-past-the-post systems or not.

Q - Sherry Romanado: I wasn't asking what voting system.... I'm looking at what the possible ramifications are of using that.

Given that, you did mention our military who are serving overseas. I have two sons currently serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, so it's something that's important to me. Is there a possibility of leveraging technology, knowing the risks, to reach folks who want to be able to vote?

You mentioned the downloading of the form and filling it out and so on and so forth, but is there a possibility of leveraging technology to increase the efficiencies in how we handle our elections? Is there still something that can be done in terms of improving it?

A - Barbara Simons:  In terms of downloading, the example I gave of the United States for the military overseas—the mail is expedited and is paid for by the government—is a way of doing it without looking at more technological fixes. The government could expedite the return of the voter ballots for free. That would certainly help.

I'm reluctant to suggest having a small number of voters vote over the Internet, just because we have seen certainly in the United States and here too that sometimes a small number of voters can change an outcome. I'd hate to see even a small number of ballots being vulnerable. It's better than a large number, but—

Intervention from the Chair Francis Scarpaleggia (question session out of time): Thank you, Dr. Simons.

Q - Pat Kelly: I'll ask Dr. Simons to comment on this. Although much of the panel has been in concurrence over the non-desirability of Internet voting, nevertheless it struck me that, if online voting was merely an enabling tool to address people with mobility problems or those who are in remote areas—although we've heard from other witnesses about the challenges there—then does that take the target off an election? If we are talking about a relatively small number of votes that may be identified in some cases with geographically remote places, then does that take the target off? Is it safer if it is not the default, or is there absolutely no acceptable use or application for online voting?

A - Barbara Simons: I think there are acceptable uses for online voting for elections that don't matter much. For example, for prom queen, I don't care. I think it depends on how important you think the election is and how much of a risk you want to take. Obviously, fewer people voting over the Internet means the risk will be smaller. If the election doesn't matter, then who cares if it is risky or not?

Q - Pat Kelly: In your opinion, there's no acceptable way to do it, if you place value on the outcome of an election, which we most certainly do at this committee.

A - Barbara Simons: How much risk do you want to take?

Labels: #ERRE, electronic voting, internet voting, links to audio, links to presentations, online voting

First I want to make it clear that I understand the public servants preparing these materials are working on a tight deadline, with a lot of information to prepare in a short period of time.  I sympathise with the challenges they face.

I believe in evidence-based decisionmaking.  Here is the fundamental problem about the current consultations (parallel Ministerial and Committee consultations) about electoral reform: they are both asking about electronic voting and online voting with no evidence provided whatsoever.  No learning materials on electronic and online voting, no backgrounder, not even any definitions.

We don't even have the very basics to agree on what it is that we're discussing, let alone to have an informed discussion.

Here's the process one is supposed to follow:

1. Go to Canada.ca/Democracy
2. Click on Learn



3. Click on "Electronic Voting and Online Voting"

Except you can't.  Because there is no section on electronic voting and online voting.  Here are the sections:


You can click all you want on any of the eleven sections provided, and out of all eleven, you will find literally a single sentence (maybe) relating to electronic voting, in Changing Canada's federal electoral system - How you vote.


Where is the evidence for the statement that introducing new technologies could pave the way for online voting?  Does "introducing new technologies at the polls" mean electronic voting machines?  What does it mean? Where is the mandate for this approach to gradually transition to online voting via electronic voting?  Where is the discussion and debate about this approach?  Well there is no evidence, no definition, no mandate and no discussion.  It just appeared out of nowhere.

Maybe we can look at the Glossary of Canadian electoral reform terms?  Well no. 
It has no definition for electronic voting


and no definition for online voting


The only other information available would involve reading the Electoral systems factsheet and for some reason clicking the Library of Parliament backgrounder, and then, having landed on a bunch of text, for some reason scrolling down page after page until you reach section 6.2 Online Voting.  Which, even if by some extraordinary degree of interest you manage to reach it, is a wildly inadequate background on online voting anyway.  There is no amount of clicking and scrolling that will get you to a backgrounder on electronic voting, for there is none.

It's worth noting in addition that the committee doesn't actually have electronic voting in its mandate, although that doesn't seem to make any difference in the fact that we're proceeding to discuss electronic voting anyway.

To Sum Up

• Canada is having a national conversation about online voting, with only a very limited backgrounder that is very hard to find.  Specifically, with no learning materials on the learning page.
• Canada is having a national conversation about electronic voting, which means - well it's not clear what it means, since it isn't defined anywhere - maybe it means electronic voting machines.  The committee has no Parliamentary mandate for discussing electronic voting, and there is no backgrounder or even a definition.  And there are no learning materials on the learning page.

As evidence-based decisionmaking goes, this is not a model process.

What You Can Do

If you're concerned about Canada using electronic voting machines or online voting in national elections, please participate in the consultation (deadline October 7, 2016) and make your opinion heard.

What I Did

To address the lack if information, I have written a briefing note on online voting.

I will write a briefing note on electronic voting as well, but in the meantime, you can watch Zachary Quinto explain how US electronic voting machines can be hacked, and then watch Tom Scott talk about why electronic voting is a bad idea.

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #EngagedInER, #ERRE, electronic voting, internet voting, online voting

I'm going to assume that this is just an unfortunate misunderstanding about terminology and mandate.

Online voting means voting over the Internet.  You cast your vote from your home computer or smartphone.

Electronic voting means voting on a voting machine (a voting computer) at a polling place.

Electronic vote counting means vote tabulators of various sorts, most commonly optical mark-sense readers that count votes by scanning marked paper ballots.

Recommendations for Consultation

0. Discontinue discussion of electronic voting

However, if discussion of electronic voting is going to continue:

1. The mandate for the Electoral Reform committee should be amended, adding after the words "online voting" the following: ", and electronic voting.
   But it is probably too late to do that.
2. There should be clear definitions of electronic voting and online voting in the Host a Canadian federal electoral reform dialogue in your community materials and those definitions should also be provided to the committee.
3. The focus of the electoral reform dialogue should be placed on online voting to respect the original committee mandate.
4. The Library of Parliament Background Paper 2016-06 on Electoral Systems should have a section on electronic voting added.
5. The Electoral Reform committee online survey should have questions about electronic voting added, and the consequences of currently-completed surveys only having questions about online voting will have to be considered.
6. In future, more care must be taken with terminology used and alignment between committee activities and consultation materials.

Recommendations for Individuals

If you're concerned about Canada using electronic voting machines or online voting in national elections, please participate in the consultation (deadline October 7, 2016) and make your opinion heard.

Background

The terms of reference for the Special Committee on Electoral Reform very clearly say only online voting.  There is no mention of electronic voting.

Here's Vote 79



and Vote 80


That's the mandate discussed in Parliament.

The town hall material and discussion has proceeded to talk about electronic voting. Without an adequate backgrounder. Without even a definition. So we may get reporting back about some jumbled up mix of voting machines and online voting, while the committee itself has only discussed online voting.

And electronic voting is a VERY DIFFERENT DISCUSSION than just online voting, with very different considerations.

I will now have to write a separate briefing about electronic voting machine risks.

Anyway, here's some of the town hall materials in order to demonstrate that electronic voting is being discussed.

Potential Canadian federal electoral reform event dialogue topics and questions


So it is clear that the terminology electronic voting and online voting are not being used interchangeably, they are mentioned separately; this is not just confusing one term for the other.

Electronic voting and online voting both link to this text below about "introducing new technologies at the polls", which again has no Parliamentary mandate that I can see, other than a chain of assumptions about how using voting machines could lead to using online voting.  There is no definition of either electronic voting or online voting provided.

Changing Canada’s federal electoral system


In addition, the only thing that is even close to a briefing, the Library of Parliament Background Paper 2016-06-E on Electoral Systems, which is already weak on online voting, has no section about electronic voting at all (presumably because it's not in the committee mandate).

And the committee survey also doesn't ask any questions about electronic voting.

Some of the dialogue guidance even focuses on electronic voting alone, without mentioning online voting.

Sample Canadian federal electoral reform event agenda and facilitator guide


And there are at the time of this writing five variations of the Canadian Democracy tweet below, asking about electronic voting; I assume at least one tweet per town hall meeting.

"Electronic and Online voting?  Good idea? Bad idea? #EngagedinER" - @CdnDemocracy - 10:56 PM - 9 Sep 2016

Electronic and Online voting? Good idea? Bad idea? #EngagedinER

— Canadian Democracy (@CdnDemocracy) September 10, 2016

So to sum up:

• The town halls / MP meetings / Minister meetings / citizen-led meetings are discussing "electronic voting" despite this not being in the Parliamentary mandate for the Special Committee on Electoral Reform.
• Nowhere that I can find is "electronic voting" defined.  Apparently it means voting machines, but this is not actually written down anywhere.

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #EngagedInER, #ERRE, canada, e-voting, electronic voting

Make It Short

The Canadian government has already been cyberattacked by nation-states, computer security experts warn that online voting is not secure, national security experts warn that online voting is not secure, and online voting won't increase turnout.

Here's the evidence:

• Canadian government departments have already been seriously hacked (attacked) by other countries. Departments including the Finance Department, Treasury Board Secretariat and Defence Research and Development Canada (in 2011) and the National Research Council (in 2014) were successfully attacked. These attacks resulted in significant disruption and months worth of technical work in order to recover.
• Canada's Chief Electoral Officer is concerned about "challenges that online voting present for the integrity and secrecy of the vote" and says "caution is needed in moving forward to ensure that Canadians continue to have the same high level of trust in the integrity of elections"
• Internet voting does not appreciably increase turnout, including youth turnout.  In general the people who take advantage of voting online are middle-aged voters who would have voted at a polling station anyway.  (I realise this may seem counterintuitive, but the evidence shows this again and again, in country after country, including in Canada.)  
• The largest US organisation of computer scientists, the ACM, has a consensus recommendation opposing the use of Internet voting: "systems need some means of preserving the ability to audit and/or recount the votes.  At the present, paper-based systems provide the best available technology to do this."
• The Australian Parliament, after an extensive inquiry in 2013 specifially about electronic and online voting, with 20 hearings and over 200 submissions, concluded "Australia is not in a position to introduce any large-scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity."
• The US Department of Homeland Security recommends against Internet voting: "We believe that online voting, especially online voting in large scale, introduces great risk into the election system by threatening voters’ expectations of confidentiality, accountability and security" says Neil Jenkins, Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity Capabilities and Strategy

As further quick background I recommend:

• Why Electronic [and Online] Voting is a BAD Idea - an 8 minute video by Tom Scott
• New Brunswick has a reasonably balanced briefing (PDF) available (for its own voting consultation).  There are 2 pages on Internet voting; pages 18-19.  Vote par Internet - de la page 20 à la page 21 dans « Renforcer la démocratie au Nouveau-Brunswick » (PDF)

I Want To Know More

• Eric Geller has written a comprehensive article about online voting, interviewing many of the experts in the field.
• Andrew Appel has done a 20 minute video explaining the history of voting and the issues with online voting
• J. Alex Halderman has written a comprehensive book chapter (PDF) covering real world security risks with electronic voting and (in section 7.3) Internet voting
• J. Alex Halderman has done a 21 minute video about technical risks associated with Internet voting 
• Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia
• Australian Parliamentary Library report from 2012 - e-voting: the promise and the practice, particularly the section International experience with e-voting (this is the kind of report that Canada should have produced, or at least we should have cited this report, along with all of the material I have provided above)

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #EngagedInER, #ERRE, canada, internet voting, online voting

The City of Kitchener did a report in 2012, titled FCS-12-191 Alternative Voting - Internet Voting (link will open a page viewer).

Because the City of Kitchener website provides a page viewer and a button to generate a PDF download, I've made a copy of the PDF, you can view and download it from Google Drive (click the down-pointing arrow in the upper right of that screen to download).

The report is particularly good is in the area of turnout.  It concludes

there is no clear indication that [internet voting] increases voter turnout. There is data that shows internet voting does not increase voter turnout amongst younger voters. 

The conclusion is supported by tables in the Results and Outcomes section showing data from Markham, Peterborough, and Burlington, with a particularly detailed breakdown for Markham.  See the image extracted from the document below:


Let me re-emphasize the last sentence in the above extract:

There is clear evidence that, regardless of geography internet voting does not attract younger voters.

I believe it is the Markham evidence that underlies the Canadian Internet Voting Project's (@ivotingproject) October 31, 2015 tweet stating "Young ontario voters (aged 18-24) more likely to use paper ballots than internet voting"

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

— i-voting Project (@ivotingproject) October 31, 2015

The Kitchener report however unfortunately comes to an incorrect conclusion about security "Security issues are a real threat but most studies conclude that the risk is small to medium." The reality is most studies conclude the risk is large.

The staff report's Executive Summary recommended against adopting Internet voting and indeed Kitchener rejected Internet voting for 2014.

Executive Summary (extract)

Staff is of the opinion that [internet voting] should not be introduced in 2014 based on several factors outlined in greater detail in this report such as:

• Security of an internet voting system;
• Data that suggests it does not increase voter turnout and in particular, younger voters;
• Does not meet all of the principles of a democratic voting process;
• Cost;
• The lack of overarching guidelines especially in the area of voting system security;

Previously
June 23, 2016  City of Mississauga report on Internet Voting

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #ERRE, internet voting, Kitchener, online voting, ontario, report

The background information provided by the Special Committee on Electoral Reform is wildly inadequate in the context of online voting.  It provides only four short paragraphs.  There is no direct citation of computer scientists or computer security experts in the background paper.  I had considered this a problem, but not an insurmountable one, but now that background paper is the only information provided to inform citizens completing the committee's online survey.


The background paper does not draw upon sufficient evidence, and its "on the one hand, on the other hand" conclusion is weak.  See my previous blog post Online voting section of Background Paper 2016-06-E on Electoral Systems.

Before you complete the online voting section of the Electoral Reform survey, I encourage you to review the evidence provided below.

Make It Short

The Canadian government has already been cyberattacked by nation-states, computer security experts warn that online voting is not secure, national security experts warn that online voting is not secure, and online voting won't increase turnout.

Here's the evidence:

• Canadian government departments have already been seriously hacked (attacked) by other countries. Departments including the Finance Department, Treasury Board Secretariat and Defence Research and Development Canada (in 2011) and the National Research Council (in 2014) were successfully attacked. These attacks resulted in significant disruption and months worth of technical work in order to recover.
• Canada's Chief Electoral Officer is concerned about "challenges that online voting present for the integrity and secrecy of the vote" and says "caution is needed in moving forward to ensure that Canadians continue to have the same high level of trust in the integrity of elections"
• Internet voting does not appreciably increase turnout, including youth turnout.  In general the people who take advantage of voting online are middle-aged voters who would have voted at a polling station anyway.  (I realise this may seem counterintuitive, but the evidence shows this again and again, in country after country, including in Canada.)  
• The largest US organisation of computer scientists, the ACM, has a consensus recommendation opposing the use of Internet voting: "systems need some means of preserving the ability to audit and/or recount the votes.  At the present, paper-based systems provide the best available technology to do this."
• The Australian Parliament, after an extensive inquiry in 2013 specifially about electronic and online voting, with 20 hearings and over 200 submissions, concluded "Australia is not in a position to introduce any large-scale system of electronic voting in the near future without catastrophically compromising our electoral integrity."
• The US Department of Homeland Security recommends against Internet voting: "We believe that online voting, especially online voting in large scale, introduces great risk into the election system by threatening voters’ expectations of confidentiality, accountability and security" says Neil Jenkins, Senior Advisor for Cybersecurity Capabilities and Strategy

As further quick background I recommend:

• Why Electronic [and Online] Voting is a BAD Idea - an 8 minute video by Tom Scott
• New Brunswick has a reasonably balanced briefing (PDF) available (for its own voting consultation).  There are 2 pages on Internet voting; pages 18-19.  Vote par Internet - de la page 20 à la page 21 dans « Renforcer la démocratie au Nouveau-Brunswick » (PDF)

I Want To Know More

• Eric Geller has written a comprehensive article about online voting, interviewing many of the experts in the field.
• Andrew Appel has done a 20 minute video explaining the history of voting and the issues with online voting
• J. Alex Halderman has written a comprehensive book chapter (PDF) covering real world security risks with electronic voting and (in section 7.3) Internet voting
• J. Alex Halderman has done a 21 minute video about technical risks associated with Internet voting 
• Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia
• Australian Parliamentary Library report from 2012 - e-voting: the promise and the practice, particularly the section International experience with e-voting (this is the kind of report that Canada should have produced, or at least we should have cited this report, along with all of the material I have provided above)

Beyond that, there are 12 years worth of material in this blog itself

http://blog.papervotecanada.ca/

and 6 years worth of material in my Twitter

http://twitter.com/papervote

I'm happy to respond to specific requests for particular evidence related to Internet voting. 

Take the Survey

Now that you've had a chance to get a proper briefing with relevant evidence, I encourage you to complete the online survey (deadline unknown; presumably before deadline October 7, 2016) or use any of the other methods to contribute to the Special Committee on Electoral Reform.

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #ERRE, canada, consultation, internet voting, online voting

These are the positions of witnesses before the Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE) about online voting, based on their testimony.
Only witnesses with testimony posted online are listed in the table; more will be added as testimony is made available.

First name	Last name	Role / Position	Credentials	Position on online voting	Quote(s)	Date
Maryam	Monsef	Minister of Democratic Institutions		Supportive but concerned about security	Online voting and similar reforms that embrace the technological advances we have today should be seen as ways to increase participation by removing barriers that may exist for some Canadians. At all times, though, there should always be a balance between the security and the integrity of the voting process.	July 6, 2016
Marc	Mayrand	Chief Electoral Officer of Canada		more research needs to be done	I have no plans to introduce online voting for 2019. ... I think there's still a lot of research to be done, and there are many considerations... social acceptability, security, and vulnerability	July 7, 2016
Jean-Pierre	Kingsley	Chief Electoral Officer of Canada, 1990-2007		Supportive but concerned about security	The analogy with online purchasing and banking—and I heard the arguments this morning—is flawed. The argument is flawed, and Marc Mayrand answered that question. Banks and other institutions hedge the risk and they remove the risk, at least most of the time, from the individual. A margin of error is acceptable, against which they successfully hedge, but what margin of error is acceptable to us with the electoral system? one issue about security of voting. The other one is is the security attached to the transmittal of the vote and then the transmittal of the results.	July 7, 2016
R. Kenneth	Carty	Professor Emeritus, University of British Colombia	PhD in Comparative Politics, Queen's University	not an expert, perhaps online voting is something for the future	I know nothing about the technicalities. I heard both the current and the past Chief Electoral Officer say they don't believe that the security concerns have been dealt with yet. I think this is an issue probably for the future.	July 25, 2016
Brian	Tanguay	Professor, Political Science, Wilfrid Laurier University	PhD in Political Science from Carleton University	not an expert, concerned about security but cautiously interested	This isn't something that I have done research on, but like Professor Wiseman I would be worried about the security aspects of online voting. However, nonetheless I am intrigued by the prospect and believe that a number of studies at the municipal level here in Ontario are being conducted or will be conducted in the future, and ought to continue to be conducted. I think it's definitely something that should be explored. All the while we should keep in mind that the Internet is not necessarily a secure environment for this kind of thing.	July 25, 2016
Nelson	Wiseman	Director, Canadian Studies Program, Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto	Ph.D., University of Toronto (area of specialisation unknown)	not in favour of Internet voting, not an expert, very concerned about security	You've also discussed Internet voting. I don't favour that either, but if it is going to be used, I think it should only be for the housebound and the disabled. In my limited reading in this area I've seen that the preponderance of experts are opposed to it because it's easy...well, not easy, but you can hack the system. A few years ago three federal government departments were hacked. We have no idea of how extensive the information was that was lifted. Also, we just had the Democratic Party, the DNC, hacked. At the University of Toronto the students decided—students are ahead of me, I don't even have a cellphone—that by having Internet voting it would increase participation because turnout was only 15% when students went to vote. They introduced Internet voting and turnout was 15%. Two or three years ago, the University of Western Ontario had an election for their student council and president and it was hacked. The NDP had a convention to select the leader and snafus appeared. Can you imagine what will happen on election night? The Internet is convenient, but incidentally it's not a social activity. It's social when you show up at the polls, you meet your neighbours, you get in line, and you talk to other people. Pressing these buttons at home is cocooning.	July 25, 2016
Michael	Marsh	Emeritus Professor, Trinity College Dublin (Department of Political Science)	PhD (university and specalisation unknown)	online voting is a long way away	In simple terms, we [Ireland] don't have online voting. Postal voting is very difficult here, and I think online voting is a long way away. There is research on postal voting. In some jurisdictions, I think Sweden, most people vote long before the election takes place. The hope was that postal voting would make it easier to vote, and therefore would raise turnout. Most of the research with which I am familiar says that what happens is that those people who would vote anyway find it easier to vote, and those people who wouldn't vote anyway don't vote just because they can vote by post. It facilitates the regular voter, not someone who's turned off from the system.	July 26, 2016
Michael	Gallagher	Professor of Comparative Politics, Trinity College Dublin	PhD, Strathclyde, School of Government & Public Policy	concerned about secrecy of the ballot, no demand in Ireland for online voting	It's hard to envisage an online voting system that has a paper component to it. One concern about online voting here and in a lot of countries would be the secrecy of the ballot, which means in this country not just that you don't have to show anyone else how you voted, but you can't prove to anyone else how you voted even if you want to. The fear, then, is that if there were online voting, how do we know there isn't someone sitting and looking over your shoulder, making you vote in a particular way or bribing you to vote in a particular way? If there were a paper record of how you voted, then clearly the problems would be even greater, so there is really no demand here for online voting. I realize that is one of the terms of reference of the committee, but it's not something that Ireland could really throw much light on.	July 26, 2016
Patrice	Dutil	Professor, Ryerson University (Department of Politics and Public Administration)	PhD in History from York University	more research needed, would support if it was "accurate and foolproof"	The third point is that I do support continued research on online voting and its eventual adoption once we are all assured that it is accurate and foolproof.	July 26, 2016
Peter	Russell	Professor Emeritus, Department of Political Science, University of Toronto	Rhodes Scholar, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, B.A. with first class honours in 1957 [reference]	no position stated		July 26, 2016
Tom	Rogers	Electoral Commissioner, Australian Electoral Commission		Australia does not have national online voting; Parliamentary inquiry recommended against it	Electronic voting is a matter for the Australian Parliament, not for the AEC, and it would require a change to our legislation. At the federal level we do not use electronic voting, nor do we use Internet voting. In 2014 our electoral matters committee inquired into the topic of electronic voting, and I will just quote from that for one moment. It found that “irrespective of one's philosophical view about electronic voting, ...there can be no widespread introduction of electronic voting in the near term without massive costs and unacceptable security risks.” At the state and territory level, some commissions have trialed electronic voting. In the Australian Capital Territory, where Canberra is located, electronic voting has been used in early voting centres since 2001. They use a system of personal computers. In New South Wales, Internet voting was trialed in 2011 and 2015 for particular categories of voters... I am aware of significant media commentary surrounding security aspects of this system, but I'm unable to comment further. I don't own that system. ...a 2014 report of the Australian Parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, which is our parliamentary oversight committee. They did a comprehensive hearing into this topic and have written a comprehensive report on it. That quote came from that report, in which at that point in 2014 they acknowledged that whilst it may be inevitable at some point, they pointed out the significant risks that might accrue from electronic voting or Internet voting if it weren't done properly. [Note: see blog post Australia concludes electronic voting would catastrophically compromise election integrity]	July 26, 2016
Robert	Peden	Chief Electoral Officer, New Zealand		no position stated	[Note: On slide 25 "Electronic Voting" of the presentation (PDF) provided by the New Zealand Electoral Commission, it states: No current legislative plans to introduce electronic voting for parliamentary elections Trial proposed for 2016 local authority elections not proceeding ]	July 26, 2016
Henry	Milner	Senior Researcher, Chair in Electoral Studies, Université de Montréal	unable to determine	not an expert, voting in person is better	This is not an area I've looked at, so I can't talk about research. I'm uncomfortable with it because maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I think too much is happening online for people and not enough is happening in their communities. As long as we can find ways of getting people to actually vote with their neighbours, I would prefer that. I haven't been persuaded that online helps us much.	July 27, 2016
Alex	Himelfarb	Clerk of the Privy Council, 2002-2006	Ph.D in sociology from University of Toronto	would prefer electronic voting—if it increased access and participation—to mandatory voting	In the spirit of old fogeys, I too quite like the idea of elections as a collective experience. I think that's hugely valuable. On the other hand, I would prefer electronic voting—if it increased access and participation—to mandatory voting. To the extent that it might actually increase the voting of young Canadians, I find it somewhat attractive despite my basic fogeyness.	July 27, 2016
André	Blais	Professor, Department of Political Science, Université de Montréal	Ph.D. in Political science from York University	concerned about security, we should move cautiously	I'm certainly open to the idea. The concern, as Mr. Mayrand has mentioned, is whether we can really make sure that the system cannot be hacked. I think we should move very cautiously in that direction.	July 27, 2016
Leslie	Seidle	Research Director, Canada's Changing Federal Community, Institute for Research on Public Policy	DPhil in Politics from the University of Oxford	no position stated		July 27, 2016
Larry	LeDuc	Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of Toronto	Ph.D from the University of Michigan (area of specialization unknown)	no position stated		July 27, 2016
Hugo	Cyr	Dean, Faculty of Political Science and Law, Université du Québec à Montréal	LL.D. (Université de Montréal)	be cautious. concerned about the secret ballot and coercion. online voting won't dramatically increase youth turnout.	I would just like to make a comment on online voting. We haven't said much about it. Personally, I would advise you to be cautious about this. We know that ballot secrecy protects the voter, but, above all, it also protects the system against fraud. When the ballot is secret, it cannot be sold easily, because buyers have no way of knowing whether the people trying to sell their vote are telling the truth about how they actually voted. Online voting, which is done remotely over the Internet, basically makes it possible to disclose the information required to vote and makes the vote much more susceptible to horse trading. There is therefore a risk, which is not trivial since we now use social networks a lot more, and so on. I do have reservations about this, and I don't think that simply making it possible to vote online will dramatically increase turnout among younger voters.	July 27, 2016
Dennis	Pilon	Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, York University	PhD from York University (Politics)	no position stated		July 28, 2016
Jonathan	Rose	Associate Professor, Department of Policital Studies, Queen's University	Ph.D. in Political Science from Queen's University	no position stated		July 28, 2016
Maryantonett	Flumian	President, Institute on Governance (speaking on behalf of the Institute)	a Master’s Degree in History and completed comprehensive exams towards a PhD in History at the University of Ottawa	very strongly in favour of online voting, research needed on confidentiality and integrity	...the ability to vote online would make a difference [in voter turnout] as well. A survey commissioned by us at the Institute on Governance—not yet published, but I will make it available to the committee after my appearance—shows that Canadians widely endorse online voting. I believe that technology that could and must ensure both the confidentiality and the integrity of an online voting process must be aggressively explored now, while we still have a few years to go. People live their lives online, do their banking online, and pay their taxes online, but they can't vote online. A younger generation does not understand this, and frankly neither do I. I say let Canada be at the vanguard of piloting, experimenting, and implementing online voting as quickly as possible. [Also see IOG blog post - Democratic Reform in Canada: Online Voting, Referenda, and the Governance Ecosystem #ERRE]	July 28, 2016
Arend	Lijphart	Research Professor Emeritus of Political Science, University of California	Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale University	no position stated		August 22, 2016
Benoît	Pelletier	Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa	LL.D., Université Paris I (Panthéon-Sorbonne), France; LL.D., Aix-Marseille III, France	no position stated		August 22, 2016
Nathalie	Des Rosiers	Dean, Faculty of Law, Civil Law, Ottawa University	LL.M., Harvard University	no position stated		August 22, 2016
Harold	Jansen	Professor of Political Science, University of Lethbridge	Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Alberta	any move to online voting should be pursued with some caution not a technical expert; concerned about security, lack of transparency and difficulty of identity verification does not expect online voting would result in increased turnout; youth are less politically involved online than you might think primarily presented results of online survey (results are not statistically representative)	My colleagues at four other Canadian universities and I have been surveying Canadians for the last two and a half years about their online political activities. In our surveys, we've asked a few questions about Canadians' attitudes toward online voting. This research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and part of what they asked us to do was to try to come up with knowledge that would be useful and inform public debates. We've only begun to start analyzing some of that data, so I'm going to give you some preliminary findings quite briefly at the end. In our survey, 36% of Canadians thought that Internet voting was risky; 42% thought it was safe; and the rest weren't sure one way or the other. What I found very interesting, though, is that a third of the people who said it was risky still said they were very likely to vote online if it were available to them. I think it's because the risk doesn't accrue to them personally; it's a risk to the system, not to them personally. One caution: our survey was done through an online panel. Very high income people were most likely to say they would very likely vote online. any move to online voting should be pursued with some caution. It should be supplementary to what we have. It shouldn't replace the kinds of things Elections Canada always does, because there is a divide in digital skills that could end up disenfranchising voters. Mrs. Sherry Romanado: We talked quickly about online voting, and you had talked about the statistics and the fact that it wasn't statistically sound because the people who participated were online. Prof. Harold Jansen: We have the problem that we're doing it online, and it overrepresents the politically interested. there's a technical side of it—and I'm not a computer scientist and there are other people better qualified to talk about that. The major issue is the lack of transparency in the process. Things disappear into cyberspace and nobody's entirely sure what happens and you can't recreate a paper trail the way you can with a paper ballot. That's a significant issue. There's the issue of identity verification. Are the people casting the ballot actually the people who are supposed to cast it? How do you prevent ballots from being sold or those identities from being traded off? There are all kinds of issues around that, which I think are fairly significant technical challenges. My sense is that technically we've got a way to go yet to have things that are safe and secure enough. I don't think we should expect realistically huge gains in voter turnout. The reality is that people, and youth included, do a lot less politically online than you might expect. Our surveys have shown that very few people follow politicians on Facebook or on Twitter or engage with them online, and those people who do intend to be politically interested. So generally, it tends to just provide another tool for the people who are already engaged.	August 22, 2016
Christian	Dufour	Political scientist, Analyst and Writer; Chercheur, ENAP à Montréal	lawyer (avocat); unable to determine details	concerned about security and identity verification, also concerned that online voting would devalue the vote	Aside from security and verification issues, a vote can very easily be devalued. When we vote now, we always have to go to a physical location. Some effort is required. It is not a survey. So there is always a risk. On one hand, there is a desire to make voting easier and to reach out to people, but I'm not sure how effective that would be. Isn't there a risk that the vote itself would be devalued?	August 22, 2016
Barry	Cooper	Professor (political philosophy and war), University of Calgary	PhD in Political Science from Duke University	no position stated		August 23, 2016

Number of witnesses to date with computer science, computer security, or voting technology expertise: 0.
(Note however that the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada is advised by people who have such expertise, as are other electoral officers.)

Kudos to those who are non-experts in online voting who declared so, and who urged caution.

Note that despite Dr. Tanguay's perception, there have been no technical studies of online voting at the municipal level in Ontario. Only non-technical investigations. Also note that Maryantonett Flumian's assertion that online voting would increase turnout is not supported by the evidence.

If you do have expertise in computer science, computer security, or voting technology, I encourage you to participate in the committee (by October 6, 2016 at the latest) as a witness and/or by submitting a brief.

Labels: #ERRE, internet voting, online voting

UPDATE 2016-07-19: Official transcripts of Marc Mayrand and ... are available and excerpted below.

Marc Mayrand's opening remarks are also available from Elections Canada.

Also see @kady's liveblog
and her article Why not fight about online voting instead?
in response to which I have posted a comment.

Below are excerpts specific to online voting.  Any emphasis (bold italics) in the text is mine.

TRANSCRIPT START - July 7, 2016 - Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand

Mr. John Aldag:
    ... if we were to look at things like some form of online voting or electronic voting, would the timeline of May 2017 include that kind of introduction, or would it be more of a status quo?

Mr. Marc Mayrand:
    I have no plans to introduce online voting for 2019. I would need, certainly, very clear directions in that regard. I think there's still a lot of research to be done, and there are many considerations. That's what I would like to see the committee doing in its work, addressing some of the key considerations and giving us some direction on where we should go and how should we proceed to explore and test online voting at some point. I doubt very much that this could be done by 2019, given the scope of the reform we're looking at. I think that would be a significant burden on capacity.











    Yes.



    Unfortunately, we'll have to go to the next question, but it's a good thought, and we can pick up on it in a bit.






    I believe so. If we want Canadians to have confidence in the electoral system, we need to make sure it's one they accept.



    Let's just say it doesn't seem too difficult.

    I'd like to know whether you're considering giving Canadians the option between voting online, similar to electronic tax return filing, and going to the polling station and showing identification.


















Mr. Marc Mayrand:
    It's very difficult for me to really respond clearly and directly to your question.
    I think the one thing that comes to mind first of all is that this committee has a mandate. The other aspect is that these issues require, I think, assessing what the social acceptability of online voting or mandatory voting. I understand that this committee will undertake extensive public consultations over the next short while, looking at these matters and voting systems.
    I'm not aware if the procedure and House affairs committee has by tradition undertaken such broad consultations. That's the one caveat I would put out there. I think it's important to have significant consultation on these matters. They are important and directly affect electors.

Mr. Matt DeCourcey:
    ...
    We observed that students in Fredericton really appreciated being able to vote on campus. That worked out very well.
[English]

     I wonder if maybe you could share some evidence that demonstrates that engaging young Canadians, those below 18 and those entering adulthood, in education around civic affairs, democratic institutions, voting, helps enhance voter turnout and helps encourage long-term participation in the process. We absolutely want to encourage greater numbers of Canadians voting. I'm convinced of that. Is there any direction you can send us?

Mr. Marc Mayrand:
   ...
    We can build all sorts of online services, remove all sorts of barriers, but if people don't have the interest, don't have the knowledge, they may not take advantage of the opportunity. I think these things go hand in hand.

Mr. Luc Thériault:
    I'd like to know whether you've done any studies in the past on online voting. You are aware of the problems Quebec experienced with that in 2005. I imagine that, even under the current voting system, you would be able to further automate the process or offer online voting. That was my understanding.
    Is that correct?

Mr. Marc Mayrand:
    We did a fair number of intensive studies for a few years, at the beginning of the decade, and we do indeed have a solid grasp of the issues, the barriers, the possibilities, and the associated risks. I can share that information with the committee.

Ms. Elizabeth May:
     ... it's an honour again to get to ask a few more questions of you, Mr. Mayrand.
    On the online voting question, I've seen in some commentaries that there's a societal benefit in the social cohesion of people collectively experiencing voting, even the lining up—I think we've all had great experiences as voters before we became candidates—and what happens when you're standing in line. Is there any literature on this? Is this a concern to be weighed against the convenience factor of online voting?

Mr. Marc Mayrand:
    I've certainly heard about it. I don't recall reading about it. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. We can see if we can find anything about it.

Mrs. Sherry Romanado:
    ...
    On the flip side, if Canada did want to implement online voting—and now I'm talking about folks who are in rural areas who may not have broadband Internet—what would be some of the barriers for our being able to implement something? Again, I bring up maybe lack of Internet or good Internet access.
    Could you elaborate on some of the other barriers?

Mr. Marc Mayrand:
    Connectivity, even though it's improving all the time, remains an issue in many parts of the country. As I mentioned earlier, electronic tabulation may have its limits for very remote areas for the simple fact that connectivity is not always up to par. I think that's a government as a whole issue that needs to be prioritized. I believe there are various programs to improve broadband access and speedy Internet access across the country and it's an effort that needs to be continued.

TRANSCRIPT END

TRANSCRIPT START

Below is my original unofficial transcription.  Please use the official transcripts above instead.

Unoffical transcription from ParlVu (meeting 4, 10am).

To Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand

John Aldag - Q "If we were to look at something like online voting, electronic voting, would the timeline of May 2017 include that kind of introduction?"

Marc Mayrand - A "I have no plans to introduce online voting for 2019. ... I think there's still a lot of research to be done, and there are many considerations... [committee] should give [Elections] some direction ... how should we proceed to explore and test online voting at some point.  I doubt very much this could be done by 2019 given the scope of the reform we're looking at... would be a significant burden."

Luc Thériault (in translation) - Q "With regards to online voting you said that you would like to have clear guidelines from the committee and I would like to hear a little bit more on this point.  What do you foresee as being problematic on this front? We know that voting is a very solemn process, it takes place in private and how then will we manage such issues with online voting?"

Marc Mayrand (in translation) - A "Thank you for the question.  Yes we've done some studies on this and I'm delighted to share them with the committee.  Obviously technology is changing quickly and so that is something we have to take into consideration, people have been talking about online voting for some time now, I can share these studies with the committee.  To my mind one thing that's important though is the social acceptability of online voting, these questions related to security, to vulnerability, we would have to define the parameters of where this vote would be used - would you be able to vote from any computer, or would it still be supervised electronic voting, would you have to vote from a specific place.  I think that it would be useful to start to narrow down the focus, narrow down the field.  For example we can have postal voting at the moment and that's not a supervised vote, and so are are there risks related to that... [for online voting] would they be any different, could they be mitigated?  That's the sort of question that we would have to have a look at & I'd like to have some input on that.  If we look at online voting in Canada we see that it is somewhere that progress has been made in the municipalities but it's not something that is done at the provincial level, at the federal level... some studies have been undertaken but we haven't had any new attempts; everyone's had a look at it but everybody seems to be waiting to have some direction from the top to see what it is we should do, where we should go if we want to go ahead with online voting."

Ruby Sahota - Q "What other changes can we make to the Elections Canada Act to ensure that we are inclusive and that we respect all the diversity that we have in Canada."

Marc Mayrand - A "If you want to make a fundamental different in accessibility... you need to really seriously look at online voting.  ... If we really want to make a breakthrough, it would be to explore more aggressively online voting - how make it an option for these electors."

...

Ruby Sahota - Q "You were talking a lot about security and social acceptability, I think that the world is starting to move towards finding it socially acceptable doing online, I mean people make million dollar deals online, and transfer money all the time, so it's hard for me to figure out why we can't figure out a way to vote that's secure online and I think people would come onboard since it would open it up to so many more people."

Chair interjects as Sahota's question time is up.

Sherry Romanado (in translation) - Q "Could you give use a bit more information on ... technology that could be used to improve voting. ..."

Marc Mayrand (in translation) - A "... Rendering this automatic will take a lot of work, however there is no reason for us not to have automated forms and automated voting, this would also guarantee a better compliance, there would be fewer errors, errors would be picked up by the machines used. ..."

...

Sherry Romanado (in translation)  - Q "With regards to online voting, I know that a number of us have already raised the matter, we want there to be a heightened participation amongst Canadians.  Currently we can file our taxes online, or on paper, it's not very difficult ... And so do you think that it would be possible to allow Canadians to vote online if they want to, just as we do with our tax returns - but they would still have the option to go to the polling station if they would wish to?"

Marc Mayrand (in translation) - A "To me that is an issue rather of facts.  I don't think that in any case we would replace paper voting by online voting, all we would do would be to provide another option for voters, and then voters will be able to choose the one that they want. ... With online voting, there would be positive benefits for certain groups, we have to move forward in a progressive and wary way."

Sherry Romanado - Q "Instead of selecting a specific group to pilot online voting, could we not leave it up to the choice of the Canadians, how they would vote?  I can order a pizza online, I can order a Starbucks coffee or charge up my bank account, I can do everything online.  On the day of the vote I may be busy, it may be raining, it may be I don't want to go out that day, if I could do it from home, it gives me that option that I don't lose my opportunity to vote. ... I think it could really change the way we do our electoral process, and I would hate to wait another two, three, four elections before we go that route."

Marc Mayrand - A "Well that's where we start going, we have to be careful.  We need to look also at security.  There are certain characteristics of the vote that we want to preserve: it's confidentiality, it's secrecy, the reliability and the integrity.  When we start looking at moving online, I would point out the big difference currently, ... with any other services you get online, the risk of online services currently is [borne] by the provider - if you go online on the bank, you use your MasterCard, somebody [misuses] it or hacks your account, it will be the provider that will cover that off.  That's one aspect which does not exist in the voting process.  The other aspect is that we lack a universal authentication system in Canada, and without such a thing it's very difficult--you can find some alternatives.  The problem we have is that if you get a code with Revenue Canada or with the bank or your PIN, everybody tells you to keep it secret, and you have an interest in keeping it secret, you have a personal interest - I'm not sure we can say the same when it comes to voting."

Chair interjects as Romanado's question time is up.

Any emphasis (bolding) above is mine.

Thanks to @kady's liveblog, which touches on all these conversations in summary.

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #ERRE, internet voting, online voting, transcript