B.C. Attorney General Shirley Bond has asked Elections BC to consider the possibility of implementing Internet voting in B.C. – nearly one year after Elections BC filed a discussion paper on the topic that raised numerous concerns over voter fraud.
Some governments have already implemented electronic voting via the Internet, with the hope that making it easier to vote will increase voter turnout.
"All of us are interested in increasing the voter turnout in elections," Bond said in a statement.
She has asked Elections BC to convene a panel of experts to consider the pros and cons and logistics of implementing electronic voting – something Elections BC has already done.
On August 31, 2011, chief electoral officer Craig James submitted a discussion paper to the government on Internet voting.
Although James made no recommendations one way or another, his report suggests Elections BC has serious concerns over Internet voting, including voter fraud.
"With the current state of technology, Internet voting is considered to be less effective than traditional, in-person and postal voting methods at protecting ballots against large-scale fraud, ensuring the secrecy of the vote and providing a fully transparent and observable process that can be effectively audited," the paper states.
The report uses Internet banking as a touchstone for security concerns. When online banking was implemented, there were concerns about fraud, and today online banking is rife with fraud. Banks typically cover the losses of their customers when there is fraud. But once an election is over, it is hard to undo any fraud that may have occurred.
The report also raised concerns about people being disenfranchised in the event the Internet goes down during an election.
"If an Internet banking service is unavailable, clients can simply try again later," the paper states. "[Whereas] elections are delivered according to a legislated calendar that allows for limited flexibility.
"In the case of an election, a service disruption for any number of reasons (e.g. denial of service attack, hacking, software bug or hardware malfunction, power or network outage) could disenfranchise voters by delaying or invalidating their votes."
There are also issues with secrecy – one of the cornerstones of democratic voting.
"In a voting transaction, the requirement for secrecy means that a voter's identity is disassociated from the vote transaction after authentication," the paper states. "This makes it much harder to protect the system against fraud and to detect fraud that has occurred.
"If evidence of tampering with an Internet vote comes to light, there is no 'before state' to return to in order to resolve the issue. By contrast, in the existing voting system, ambiguous results are resolved by having voter-marked and verified ballots reconsidered and counted again by another individual, such as a judge."
