Paper Vote Canada

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

The Federal electoral reform community dialogue tour with the  Honourable Maryam Monsef, Minister of Democratic Institutions will be doing its Ottawa / Gatineau / National Capital Region (NCR) event on Thursday September 15, 2016 at 7pm in Gatineau.

7pm-9pm
Crowne Plaza Gatineau
Salon des Nations
2 Montcalm Street
Gatineau, Quebec (sector Hull)

The discussion will include online voting, for which I have written an online voting backgrounder as the consultation itself does not provide any detailed information.

This Ministerial consultation is a separate process from the Special Committee on Electoral Reform (ERRE) consultations, and associated MP consultations, and possible citizen consultations, which are also taking place across the country at the same time.

In theory you're supposed to know that the committee hashtag is #ERRE, whereas the Ministerial consultations have the hashtag #EngagedInER and tweet from @CdnDemocracy, but in practice I'm guessing many people are not aware of the distinction.  Plus which people are also using the hashtag #electoralreform.

In brief, the Ministerial consultations provide feedback to the Minister directly, while the Special Committee (ERRE) consultations feed into a report with recommendations that the Minister will consider (the Minister is of course free to decide not to accept certain committee recommendations).

Labels: #CdnDemocracy, #EngagedInER, Electoral Reform, electoralreform, Gatineau, National Capital Region, NCR, ontario, Ottawa, Quebec

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