With talk of an online election in Thunder Bay, a group of concerned citizens want people to know the dangers of electronic ballots.
Andy Wolff, one of two speakers at the 55 plus Centre Thursday night, said voting online would take control away from the people and lead to less scrutiny. Due to information being stored online, Wolff said the idea of a secret ballot might also be in jeopardy. Wolff wants to see a return to hand-counted ballots in Thunder Bay so that elections and counting can be scrutinized by everyone.
"You can scrutinize it at every stage," Wolff said. "If there is a discrepancy everybody sees it. It’s objective. There are so many people involved in the process it would be hard to fix (an election)."
Robert Wiley, who also spoke at the information session, said his friends and family are already concerned with Thunder Bay’s electronic count. Online voting would lead to less community involvement and might even lead to less voter participation.
"The idea of putting it on the internet is absurd," Wiley said. "It’s basically a slap in the face to everyone here in Thunder Bay who is worried about this and I don’t think it should be done."
The city introduced electronic voting in 1997 and it’s been used in every municipal election since.
In 2003 a computer malfunction caused some votes to be counted more than once, but the error was quickly corrected and the returning officer certified the official count as accurate.
The miscue led to a request for a manual recount by citizen Eric Leat, but his request was ultimately turned down by Justice John Wright in January 2004. Wright did suggest a partial audit of the accuracy of the machines might be in order.
Although city clerk John Hannam has suggested internet voting would be cost effective, Wiley said cost and efficiency in an election are second to honesty, integrity and transparency.
A recent study shows a manual count would cost taxpayers $296,904, while electronic counts would cost $361,643. There is no estimate for the cost of adding Internet voting to the process come the October election.
Both Wiley and Wolff said the public needs to be aware of the issues surrounding electronic and online voting. Wolff said raising awareness is key. The pair plan on holding more meetings and want to engage college and university students as well.
"Until more people get off their rear-ends and get going on this nothing’s going to change," Wiley said. "We definitely need help in this effort."
