Paper Vote Canada

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

Another inquiry into electronic voting (which in Australia seems to include Internet voting), this time in the state of Victoria.

Submissions

The Committee is currently calling for submissions - please see the Submissions and eSubmissions pages for more information.

Public Hearings

The Committee intends to conduct public hearings at 55 St Andrews Place, East Melbourne on Monday 22 August and Wednesday 24 August, 2016.  See the Hearings and Transcripts page for more details as they become available. 

Mailing list

If you are interested in receiving updates on the progress of the Inquiry, email news@parliament.vic.gov.au, and request Electronic Voting inquiry updates. To receive all news alerts from the Parliament of Victoria, including news alerts for all parliamentary committee inquiries, email news@parliament.vic.gov.au and ask for ‘all news alerts’.

above from http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/emc/inquiry/419

Twitter: @VicParliament and @VicGovAu

It is a bit frustrating to see these endless inquiries.  The Parliament of Australia (which is different from the Parliament of Victoria) held an extensive consultation in 2013.  To quote a valid part of an otherwise misguided article in The Australian, the Parliament of Australia inquiry "held 20 hearings and reviewed more than 200 submissions before deciding ­Australia should stick to its largely paper-based system".

Please stop asking the same question about Internet voting hoping to get a different answer.

The Australian Parliament inquiry is excellent, incidentally.

Parliament of Australia -  Inquiry into and report on all aspects of the conduct of the 2013 Federal Election and matters related thereto -

Second interim report on the inquiry into the conduct of the 2013 federal election: An assessment of electronic voting options

Labels: australia, consultation, electronic voting, internet voting, online voting, Parliament of Victoria, Victoria

UPDATE 2016-10-16: The commission hasn't yet been formed, but they are already asking for comments by November 30, 2016.  You can submit comments e.g. by email to Consultations.ECO-BCE@gnb.ca

If you want to be on the committee itself, the deadline to apply is October 19, 2016.

ENDUPDATE 

CBC News - Voting reform ideas put forward by Liberals - July 5, 2016

A consultation process on overhauling the province's electoral system is being launched by Premier Brian Gallant's Liberal government in time for the 2018 election.

The Liberals tabled a 49-page discussion paper in the legislature Tuesday [July 5, 2016], hoping it will serve as a guide for a committee of MLAs that it plans to appoint later this week.

The document includes ideas such as online voting, lowering the voting age to 16 years of age from its current 18 years, and changing the way MLAs are elected, including options such as a preferential ballot or a proportional-representation system.

The discussion paper is called "Strengthening New Brunswick’s Democracy" and is available from the Government of New Brunswick website (GNB.ca) at

http://www.gnb.ca/legis/business/currentsession/58/58-2/LegDoc/Eng/58-2July/SNBD.pdf

The Internet voting section is pages 18-19.  I haven't had time to review it.

UPDATE 2016-07-15: I have reviewed the Internet voting section and it is good.  It makes it clear there are still lots of risks and unsolved problems.  ENDUPDATE

It is also available in print bilingual and in a French PDF, here are the ISBNs

ISBN 978-1- 4605-1033-9 (Print Bilingual)
ISBN 978-1- 4605-1034-6 (PDF English)
ISBN 978-1- 4605-1035-3 (PDF French)

I don't know what the mechanisms for participation will be.  I will update this post when I have more information.

UPDATE 2016-07-15:

I found the news releases

The provincial government has tabled the discussion paper and will ask the legislature to strike a select committee to consider its contents.

It is expected that hearings will take place in the fall [2016] with a report due by early 2017. The plan is to allow for any changes to be implemented in advance of the 2018 general election.

Government of New Brunswick - Government submits electoral reform options to legislative assembly - July 5, 2016

Le gouvernement soumet des options de réforme électorale à l’Assemblée législative - 05 juillet 2016

As of July 15, 2016 there is no electoral reform committee listed under Legislative Committees - Select Committees.

For the French version of the discussion paper, see

Vote par Internet - de la page 20 à la page 21 dans « Renforcer la démocratie au Nouveau-Brunswick » (PDF)

Labels: canada, consultation, internet voting, new brunswick, online voting