Online Voting Is Not Democratic

Democracy and Online Voting

• Online voting may be convenient but it does not increase voter turnout.
• It's not necessarily cost effective either. The Netherlands implemented a ban on Internet voting in 2009. It was costing them 90 euros per vote.
• It's unfair to new candidates because it limits the time with which a new candidate can make themselves known.
• Since online voting ends more than a week before election day, if there are any last minutes changes (such as a candidate withdrawing due to health matters etc.) or last minute revelations (a candidates criminal record is made public etc.) then the early voter is out of luck. I prefer to vote on the last election day.
• Opaque, non-transparent voting can afflict voter lists, poll lists,vote counting and the chain of custody.
• The system is non-transparent and its functions are hidden from the public.
• Nothing is gained by having online voting and there is too much to lose.

The Voter Identification Card (V.I.D.)

I personally know of 3 people who received more than one Voter Identification Card (V.I.D.).  It’s not that unusual. A spouse has died or maybe there’s been a separation. Maybe an adult child has moved out of the family home but is still on the voter’s list. Maybe the former tenants V.I.D. Cards came to their old address and the new tenants now have their I.D.  I know of someone who received 3 V.I.C. with each card having a different spelling of his/her name. It would be difficult to vote more than once at the polls but you certainly could vote more than once online.

There are homes in which the head of the household rules the roost. That person could stand over their spouse and/or their voting age children to make sure they vote correctly thereby having control of more than just one vote.  I have no idea of what happens in institutions.

Purging The Voters List:

In the 2014 Municipal elections in Burlington, there was a purging of the voters list.  What was the criteria used for this purging?  Who decided and how was it decided who could be on the list and who was knocked off the list?  According to a Burlington Post letter, it was very difficult and time consuming for some voters to correct the errors.  



From: http://www.grassrootsonline.ca/online-voting-bad-idea/
Online voting is a bad idea for these 3 reasons: 
1. Denial of Service Attacks  
2. Nothing is unhackable, 
3. Verifying voter ID.

Denial of Service Attacks

The first reason is due to Distributed Denial of Service Attacks, also known as DDoS attack. A DDoS attack is an attack on a network that is designed to bring the network to its knees by flooding it with useless traffic. By doing this it basically cripples the website and doesn’t allow others to connect and interact with the website. Without access to the website in the case of online voting – people can’t vote. If people can’t vote, that’s a big problem. It means whomever is the winner of the election may not have actually won.
A recent DDoS Attack to come to mind is the NDP Leadership race in early 2013 where an online voting system was set up for ten of thousands of party members to elect their new leader. The company contracted to provide the service reported that it was an attack that came from “more than 10,000 “malevolent” IP addresses behind the “hundreds of thousands of false voting requests to the system.” The company claims that the system was not penetrated (meaning the data was not tampered with in the system), but it did slow down the voting process causing balloting for the leadership contest to be pushed back. With a set election date, for most general elections moving back a date is just not feasible and quite possibly not legal.

Nothing Is Unhackable

Another reason I believe that online voting is just not smart: nothing is unhackable. I don’t care how good of a web development team you have, there’s always a team that will one up you. It’s pretty simple to see by the recent events of major websites being maliciously hacked by various groups like Anonymous and the Syrian Electronic Army. There are a tonne of brilliant minds working on the internet – good and bad. With malicious hackers out there, it’s quite easy to understand that although the website may be built to be solid and secure, some hackers may still be able to penetrate the website. With online voting, if someone accesses the system, they gain full control of the election process and could potentially control the outcome of an election by manipulating the data.
In 2010, a group of students from the University of Michigan hacked into the online voting system for the city of Washington, D.C trying to prove a point that online voting was a terrible idea. The group accessed the site through its vulnerabilities and was able to take near full control due to a coding error. Once inside the system, the team of students noted “plenty of sloppiness, including unencrypted ballots left in a temporary directory and a publicly-accessible images directory”. The risk of a hacked system isn’t just a chance for politicians and their party to one up each other, but it’s also a breach of our privacy after casting our ballot. With this type of control taken by malicious hackers and the frequency of these cyber attacks on e-voting system increases, we lose complete control of the democratic process, defeating our right to have a fair election and voting for the candidate/party of our choice.

Lack Of Verification

Lastly, how do we ensure the people that are voting online are actually who they claim to be online. I understand that there are registration systems in place and that special pins can be mailed out to voters, but there’s no verification process. How do we ensure that the person who is sitting in front of the computer casting their online balloting is actually John Smith and not Sally Jones. Who’s to say Sally Jones couldn’t get her hands on John’s voter information and now is casting a fraudulent ballot? If the system is penetrated how do we know if a voter in the system is actually the legally registered voter? There is no way, other than verifying ballots cast with some type of follow up – which is just not feasible with thousands, and in some cases millions of voters. The only way to truly way to ensure that the voter is who they claim to be is with a piece of valid photo ID and a matching voter’s card. Although some would still argue that fraudulent voting could still occur, this method is by far the most controlled. It may be old school and not as efficient as we are used to in a technology-based society, but I believe that it’s the only way to ensure that the voting process is completely democratic.
Although people may disagree with my views and say that there are web developers and programmers that can pull off a solid and secure product for online voting, I will strongly argue that there are too many risks involved with casting an ballot online – and there’s always a better team of developers ready to one up the efforts of your team to accomplish their mission. Others will say that it will make it easier and encourage voters to cast that ballot by having an online voting system. My response? Politicians should engage more with citizens, include them in the policy making process and inspire them. Then you’ll see them at the polls.
If you truly want real democracy, online voting is bad idea! 


... there's their union boss or "friend" down the street, who just wants to "help" the voter cast their ballot and comes over to the house to "watch" them vote. Intimidation can be subtle, but if someone is watching to ensure you cast your ballot "correctly" you may not feel it's "worth it" to fight.

... That is to say, if the recent election in BC were conducted online, who would believe that the voters actually elected a Liberal Majority government, when the pundits predicted a easy win for the NDP? http://www.grassrootsonline.ca/online-voting-bad-idea/

And lets not forget:

Burton v. Town of Oakville, Best, Mulvale & Serra, 2004 18068 (ON SC)

http://caselaw.canada.globe24h.com/0/0/ontario/superior-court-of-justice/2004/02/12/burton-v-town-of-oakville-best-mulvale-and-serra-2004-18068-on-sc.shtml
[4]       In his notice of application, Mr. Burton raises a number of concerns respecting the election.  A few of these issues relate to the use of vote-counting machines, but none impugns the use of these machines assuming that they are operational, in proper working order, and operated correctly.

My Unanswered Questions:

Who Has Control of the Machines and can he or she be "gotten to"?

How can I be absolutely sure my vote is recorded as I had intended?

Does the voters list stay in Canada or are these machines relaying info to another country?

Can someone walk away with all the voters info on a memory stick?

Why are we so quick to give up our democratic way of life?

Why would we want to give up the secret ballot?

Without a paper trail, how does anyone know that a vote cast will be recorded as intended? And, how would you conduct a ballot recount if it became necessary?

http://www.countingthevote.ca/

Sudbury “...proves digital ballots can be removed at will from virtual ballot boxes”

“Would you trust an election where...
1 A private company was hired to mark each ballot for the voters?
2 All ballots are counted in private?
3 No one, not even election officials, could watch the count?
4 No recounts are possible?
5 No independent audits are permitted to verify results?
   This is online voting!”

Comments

 

I just heard that the company who runs the Burlington voting machines, is the same one who was responsible for the debacle in NB this past election.

"My guess is that in Burlington voting machines have not helped increase turnout because the they have resulted in less polling stations meaning people have to travel further to vote."



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ELECTION RESULTS:
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"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."
   - Josef Stalin