Update re Oshawa considering a change to online/telephone voting. Yes, I am reversing my support. Why? Well first I will give thanks to Professor Aleksander Essex for responding to my phone inquiry Tuesday morning. He generously gave his time to explain to me some of the MAJOR SECURITY CONCERNS related to on-line voting. Note: Prof Essex is a top Canadian cybersecurity expert on election technology, a software engineering associate professor at Western University and head of the Western Information Security and Privacy Research Laboratory.
Yesterday he forwarded to the City of Oshawa what is imo a "must read" report "Online Voting in Ontario's Municipal Elections A Conflict of Legal Principles and Technology?"
It is a cybersecurity study of online voting in the 2018 Ontario municipal election. A summary version of this report was published last year, but Oshawa is the first to have access to the full report, which Prof. Essex officially released yesterday.
https://whisperlab.org/ontario-online.pdf
And boy is this comprehensive report timely, and full of pertinent information.
Making informed decisions is key to a Councillor's job. Coming soon is my 2nd year anniversary as an elected representative of Oshawa voters, I've known how important it is to 1) do research; 2) consider both sides of an issue without bias; and 3) keep an open mind.
But it sure is IRONIC when I come upon new information and publicly feel compelled to do a 180 degree turn on an issue, especially when it is a reversal of my support on my own motion. You see I made the original motion March 19, 2019 that is now the subject of the deliberations:
"Whereas a number of Ontario Municipalities offered on-line and telephone voting in the 2018 Municipal Election; and,
Whereas the City of Oshawa has experienced low voter turnout in the past elections;
Therefore the City of Oshawa investigate the benefits and costs to implement a hybrid system that allows for regular in person and proxy voting, as well as online and telephone voting in the 2022 Municipal Elections and report to Council in the third quarter of 2020; and,
This motion be referred to the Corporate Services Committee."
The Report (CORP-20-20) came to Corporate Services Committee September 14th 2020 and was dealt with again this month on October 5th. It will be on the Agenda for the Oct 26 Council meeting.
As I do not sit on Corporate Services Committee I do not have a vote there. But I attended both meetings as a visiting Councillor and expressed my support with the final motion moved by the Mayor to move forward with the online/telephone voting (as a hybrid version was pretty near double the cost)
This week I made Mayor Carter aware I am no longer in support of the motion due to new information that came to my attention. First there was the fact that the City of Guelph had online voting in 2014 and then revoked it before the 2018 election. But mainly, after listening to a 2017 video of Aleksander Essex speaking to Guelph Council and my subsequent conversation with him, albeit there is the convenience factor in favour of the change, there does not seem to be a strong push or need to change the voting system. Ultimately. the benefits of moving to online voting do not outweigh the considerable security risks. Since the integrity of the process is still very vulnerable, come Monday, Oct 26, 2020 I will be voting against changing to online voting at this time.
What seems most clear right now is that provincial guidelines and standards for online voting need to be developed and put in place. When they are, soon I hope, I will be cheering the move to online/telephone voting, but until then I cannot.
Yesterday he forwarded to the City of Oshawa what is imo a "must read" report "Online Voting in Ontario's Municipal Elections A Conflict of Legal Principles and Technology?"
It is a cybersecurity study of online voting in the 2018 Ontario municipal election. A summary version of this report was published last year, but Oshawa is the first to have access to the full report, which Prof. Essex officially released yesterday.
https://whisperlab.org/ontario-online.pdf
And boy is this comprehensive report timely, and full of pertinent information.
Making informed decisions is key to a Councillor's job. Coming soon is my 2nd year anniversary as an elected representative of Oshawa voters, I've known how important it is to 1) do research; 2) consider both sides of an issue without bias; and 3) keep an open mind.
But it sure is IRONIC when I come upon new information and publicly feel compelled to do a 180 degree turn on an issue, especially when it is a reversal of my support on my own motion. You see I made the original motion March 19, 2019 that is now the subject of the deliberations:
"Whereas a number of Ontario Municipalities offered on-line and telephone voting in the 2018 Municipal Election; and,
Whereas the City of Oshawa has experienced low voter turnout in the past elections;
Therefore the City of Oshawa investigate the benefits and costs to implement a hybrid system that allows for regular in person and proxy voting, as well as online and telephone voting in the 2022 Municipal Elections and report to Council in the third quarter of 2020; and,
This motion be referred to the Corporate Services Committee."
The Report (CORP-20-20) came to Corporate Services Committee September 14th 2020 and was dealt with again this month on October 5th. It will be on the Agenda for the Oct 26 Council meeting.
As I do not sit on Corporate Services Committee I do not have a vote there. But I attended both meetings as a visiting Councillor and expressed my support with the final motion moved by the Mayor to move forward with the online/telephone voting (as a hybrid version was pretty near double the cost)
This week I made Mayor Carter aware I am no longer in support of the motion due to new information that came to my attention. First there was the fact that the City of Guelph had online voting in 2014 and then revoked it before the 2018 election. But mainly, after listening to a 2017 video of Aleksander Essex speaking to Guelph Council and my subsequent conversation with him, albeit there is the convenience factor in favour of the change, there does not seem to be a strong push or need to change the voting system. Ultimately. the benefits of moving to online voting do not outweigh the considerable security risks. Since the integrity of the process is still very vulnerable, come Monday, Oct 26, 2020 I will be voting against changing to online voting at this time.
What seems most clear right now is that provincial guidelines and standards for online voting need to be developed and put in place. When they are, soon I hope, I will be cheering the move to online/telephone voting, but until then I cannot.