Many Ontario municipalities using online voting despite lack of provincial standards

MoreOntariomunicipalities are using onlinevotingin this month's municipal elections than in 2018, despite the absence of provincial standards on how to conduct it.

The province's Municipal Elections Act allows municipalities to opt to use alternative methods tovotingat the polls such as online, telephone and mail-in ballots if a council passes a bylaw. Municipal clerks are then responsible for establishing the procedures.

The Association of Municipalities ofOntariosays there will be 417 municipal elections held in the province on Oct. 24, and more than half 217 have decided to use online or phonevoting. That's up from 175 municipalities four years ago.

Aleksander Essex, an associate professorat Western University who specializes in cybersecurity and researches onlinevoting, says the lack of provincial standards are concerning because that means it's up to municipal councils to contract vendors and decide which technology to use.

"There has to be some kind of uniformity and accountability for those types of decisions," he said in an interview.

"At some point, it will have to be a point of contention where we have to sort of acknowledge that these [online]elections are 'real elections,' and as such, they should be held to some kind of basic democratic standards."

Province won't sayif it plans to introduce standards

Essex also runs Whisper Lab, a cybersecurity research group at Western, and says his team has been studying onlinevotingsince 2018. Using publicly-available data, he said they've found that the guarantees to ballot secrecy, voters' privacy and the transparency of onlinevotingare not always as strong as they should be.

However, he saysthe most concerning issue is the lack of evidence to support that the election results are reflective of the ballots that were actually cast, as candidates and their representatives cannot in many cases observe the counting of the electronic votes.

"In order for us to believe [the election result]we shouldn't have to rely on faith in this third-party company. We should have evidence independent and specific evidence to support a vote total."

A spokesperson for Ontario's Ministry of Municipal Affairs didn't say whether the government has plans to introduce provincial standards for onlinevoting.

"The Ministry reviews the municipal election process following every regular municipal election to ensure it continues to meet the needs ofOntariocommunities," Conrad Spezowka said in a statement.

Onlinevotinghas caused other problems in past provincial municipal elections.

In 2018, a major onlinevotingissue forced more than 50 communities to extend municipalvotinghours. Denver, Colo.-based DominionVotingSystems, which provided the electronicvotingservice to the municipalities, blamed an unnamed Toronto company for limiting incoming onlinevotingtraffic.

Neither that, nor the lack of provincial standards, have deterred communities from using thatvotingmethod this time around. Some are offering a mix of paper ballots and onlinevoting, including Thunder Bay Kingston, Markham, Vaughan, Sarnia and Brantford.

Others are proceeding without ballot boxes entirely. Barrie, Belleville, Brockville, Kenora and Kawartha Lakes along with dozens of other towns and townships are only offering online and phonevoting.

'It's an accessible form ofvoting'

Wendy Cooke, the city clerk in Barrie, said the community north of Toronto decided to go that route after successfully piloting a touchscreen version ofvotingin a city council byelection in 2020.

"It's an accessible form ofvoting. It allows people to vote 24/7. It is very easy to use," she said.

The city will have 10votingassistance centres for residents who need help using the technology.

Cooke says the city has mailed a single-use voter identification number to all registered voters to use along with othervotingcredentials such as their date of birth.

The city's election team is finalizing a process, Cooke adds, to allow candidates to come to the city hall to view the votes totals' reports any time to ensure a high level of transparency.

Many municipalities offering onlinevoting, including Barrie, have also hired firms to audit their elections.

Stephen O'Brien, vice-president of the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers ofOntario, said some smaller places are getting creative about doing that.

"We've seen other municipalities, sometimes smaller municipalities that might not have the individual resources to be able to offer that, to have them come together and pool their resources to be able to audit the system," he said.

Still, not all cities are embracing onlinevoting. The City of Toronto isn't giving voters that option, citing security and accessibility concerns, though it is using mail-in ballots for the first time.

O'Brien, who is also Guelph's city clerk, said the council there decided not to use onlinevotingthis time around either.

"There are risks that we face as a society in any number of virtual or digital interactions we have," he said. "I think city council considered those here in Guelph."