Internet Voting Report Cambridge 2012-10-15

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Agenda Item # 10.
REPORT
To: GENERAL COMMITTEE Date of Meeting: October 15, 2012 Prepared By: Alex Mitchell, City Clerk Department: Corporate Services Date to Management Committee: October 10, 2012 Report No.: Corperv/12-145 File No.: Ward No.:
VOTING METHOD OPTIONS FOR THE 2014 MUNICIPAL ELECTION
Recommendations: THAT the City Clerk be directed to issue the appropriate Request for Proposals, with other municipalities in the Region of Waterloo from vendors for Internet, Telephone and Optical Scan Voting for the 2014 Municipal Election; BACKGROUND Since 1991 the City of Cambridge has successfully utilized vote tabulators optical scan (paper ballot), both centralized and decentralized methods and have implemented sip and puff tabulators for special needs citizens. Since that time there have been ongoing advances in voting technology as well as additional suppliers of election equipment and services that have entered the market. The City Clerk committed to reviewing Internet voting prior to the 2014 elections. Research and analysis of the issues surrounding voting methods have now been completed and it is appropriate at this time for the City to consider whether any changes to our election systems should be implemented for the 2014 election. Once Council indicates a preferred direction through this report, in early 2013 staff (together with the Cities of Kitchener and Waterloo) will issue a comprehensive request for proposals to election system vendors for the appropriate systems, hardware, software, and services.
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... Municipal Clerks must ensure that elections are established which adhere to#the Agenda Item 10. following principles which the court may have regard toin making determinations under the Act: x x x x x x x the secrecy and confidentiality of the voting process is paramount; the election shall be fair and non-biased; the election shall be accessible to the voters; the integrity of the process shall be maintained throughout the election; there is to be certainty that the results of the election reflect the votes cast; voters and candidates shall be treated fairly and consistently; and the proper majority vote governs by ensuring that valid votes be counted and invalid votes be rejected so far as reasonably possible1
There are several voting methods, or combinations thereof, available with respect to conducting municipal elections. The most common remains a traditional voting place model however the move toward alternative voting methods continues to increase. Section 42(1) of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 (the Act) provides that a municipality may pass a by-law to authorize the use of an alternative voting method. Alternative methods such as telephone, vote-by-mail and Internet voting have all been used by municipalities in Ontario for various reasons. For the most part, non-voting place based methods (i.e. unsupervised voting methods) are typically employed by jurisdictions which are predominantly rural in nature and/or where the electorate is geographically detached. Municipalities such as these tend to favour alternative methods as it is often difficult to establish physical voting places in areas and facilities which are both accessible to the electorate and feasible for processing potential voters. Theoretically, unsupervised voting methods enhance voter accessibility at the expense of relinquishing some control such as the verification of voter identity. Some argue that the principles of the Act cannot be fully upheld by any method with which direct supervision of electors does not occur. Although the onus of responsibility is placed upon a voter to ensure that he/she does not contravene Section 89 of the Act (votes without being entitled to do so, votes more than the Act allows etc.), many are concerned that unsupervised voting may further facilitate the potentiality of these offences. That is not to say that these and other offences, such as voter impersonation, will not occur as a result of a voting place based model, it is only to presume that the direct supervision by election officials and scrutineers at a voting place may serve as a deterrent and reduce the chances of a controverted result. One of the potential disadvantages inherent in the use of an unsupervised voting method is the need for an extensive elector and candidate education program. Even if significant resources are allocated in order to inform electors of the change in methodology, voters are not always receptive to it. There is often a reluctance to utilize an alternative method, especially in the first year of its use. Furthermore, mailing address errors on the voters list coupled with a forced reliance on the postal system have proven to present challenges to the alternative voting methods. Notwithstanding the potential drawbacks, municipalities are continuing to lead the way in the use of alternative voting methods. Elections Canada and Elections Ontario are
Rust-D'Eye, G., & Bar-Moshe, O. (2010). Ontario municipal law: a user's manual - 2010. Scarborough, Ont.: Carswell
\background Voting Method Report 2014 Final 1.doc - 9/11/2012 - 8:32:29 AM
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... now actively exploring, and hoping to at least pilot in the near future, alternative voting Agenda Item # 10. methods. Discussion Consideration has been given to four potential methods of voting for the 2014 municipal election in the City of Cambridge; vote-by-mail, telephone voting, a voting place tabulator model and Internet voting. The following provides a summary and analysis of each. Vote-by-Mail A vote-by-mail solution is a paper based alternative voting method in which a package containing instructions, a ballot and a voter declaration form is mailed to every qualified elector on the voters list. A voter will mail back his/her completed ballot and declaration form, each in a separate prepaid postage envelope. At 8:00 p.m. on voting day, a municipality will either hand count the returned ballots or tabulate them using a central count scanner. Results are then transferred to an election reporting system or declared by some other means. A few key advantages of this model are; its convenience for both resident and nonresident electors, it eliminates the cost of voting locations and temporary election officials and it utilizes a paper ballot which provides for a good audit trail. However, notwithstanding errors that may occur as a result of the mail distribution process (which must occur both to and from the elector) as well as inaccurate data on the voters list, there are also room for errors with respect to the proper completion of the ballot. In the past, issues have arisen whereby electors returned their ballots improperly marked and/or disclosed their identity and how they voted by returning their declaration form and ballot in the same envelope. Unlike telephone or Internet voting, there can be no controls established in order to prevent over-voting or spoiling the ballot by other means. Although a central count scanner/tabulator can assist in deciphering voter intent it would be required to spoil votes for an office that is over-voted, inadvertently or not. This model appears to be more prevalent in Ontario municipalities that are more rural, sparsely-populated with a large geographic area or with cottage municipalities. Telephone Voting Telephone voting is an alternative method with which qualified electors on the voters list receive a voter information package containing instructions on how to access and complete their ballot. Most interactive telephone voting systems rely on the voter to process an audio ballot by way of dialling on the key pad. After voting selections have been made for each office the voter will be prompted to review their decisions. Once confirmed by the voter, the final ballot data is transferred to a secure server which is tabulated at the end of voting day and transferred to a results reporting system. Telephone voting has only been used by a small minority of municipalities in Ontario and is most commonly employed as part of a multi-channel voting solution. The largest municipality to use telephone voting is the Regional Municipality of Halifax which used a
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... combination of Internet and telephone voting (approximate populationItem # 10. Agenda 359,000 Source: 2006 Concensus Population). A telephone-based system assists in the proper completion of a ballot by disallowing over-votes (i.e. fully qualifying voter intent), however, concerns have been raised that misdirected mailing of the PINs required to use telephone voting may increase the potential for procurement of a vote by someone other than the intended elector. Other issues that have been raised relate to technical challenges regarding voter access, network congestion due to call volumes, data storage and auditability. Some have claimed that there are challenges with respect to navigating an audio ballot containing numerous candidates in each office. Completing a physical ballot (or a visual representation thereof) is generally seen to be easier. Voting Place/Tabulator Model Within a voting place based method, electors receive a Voter Notification Card (VNC) containing information as to where they are permitted to vote during the advance voting period or on voting day. A voter is reminded to visit a voting place with the necessary documentation in order to validate his/her identity. A paper ballot is marked and then processed by a vote tabulator. The tabulator will prompt voters of a ballot that cannot be processed and allow them an opportunity to correct the error. After processing, the physical ballots are reserved in a sealed ballot box and results are tabulated (but not displayed) as each is processed. The results of the voting activity at each location is tabulated at the end of voting day and transferred to a central location to be compiled and reported. The majority of Canadian municipalities, including the City of Cambridge, have traditionally used a voting place based model with paper ballots. Ballot scanning equipment is often employed in order to expedite the tabulation of results as is the case in the City of Cambridge. Tabulators provide controls to reduce the number of spoiled ballots and increase the overall efficiency of the voting process. Touch screen voting machines have also been used in conjunction with tabulators to provide for an accessible voting channel in other municipalities. Current vote tabulators provide for a wide array of integrated accessible voting capabilities (Braille and audio navigation, sip and puff etc.). There is also supplementary equipment that can be used and manipulated by a variety of assistive input devices in order to print a hard copy ballot which is then processed by the primary vote tabulator. These features result in the integration of an accessible voting option as it forces every ballot to be processed in the same way, regardless of the method used to mark it. Internet Voting A typical Internet voting process is one where a voter information package is mailed to qualified electors on the voters list. An ID code is included which is required in order to register for Internet voting. At the time of registration, an elector may also be asked to answer additional questions or establish a personal security word/phrase in order to help validate their identity later on. Following registration, additional information including a PIN is forwarded to the elector either by mail or by way of an encrypted email. The ID code, PIN and personal security word/phrase are then used to access the online ballot during the Internet voting period. Electors may access the online ballot from any computer if both it, and the browser, meet the minimum technical requirements. A voter will have an opportunity to review his/her completed ballot and
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... make changes prior to its submission. Controls are in place Agenda Item # 10. to warn the voter of any over-votes or blank offices. Voting data is stored in a secure database and tabulated at the end of voting day. The system is designed to ensure there is no way to link a voter with his/her ballot. A minority of municipalities in Ontario have used Internet voting however the use of Internet voting is growing rapidly. In 2003, the Town of Markham was the first major municipality in North America to use it as a voting option during the advance voting period. Markham used it again in the next election in 2006 along with Peterborough and approximately 18 other municipalities. In 2010 the number increased to 44 municipalities in Ontario. These municipalities did vary on how they offered Internet voting. For the 2010 municipal and school board elections in Ontario, many municipalities that offered Internet voting did so for advanced voting periods only while using other voting methods on Election Day. These were typically municipalities that utilized paper ballots on Election Day. Others chose to use Internet voting in combination with another form of voting for the entire election period and these were typically municipalities that offered Internet voting with telephone voting. Internet voting has been made available to provide for convenience, to accommodate changing lifestyles and demanding work schedules and to enhance accessibility for persons who may not be available or able to vote in person. For rural areas, Internet voting offers enhanced accessibility to reach electors who are geographically disconnected. For others, it offers a potential means to further engage those who may be more inclined to vote from the comfort of their own home or office rather than travelling to a physical voting place. Security Several concerns have been expressed with respect to the security of Internet voting however. Denial of service (DoS) attacks, trojan horses, viruses and website spoofing have all been identified as potential threats. Technical measures are established to decrease the potential of these threats which all pose a risk to the confidentiality and overall integrity of the voting process. Most Internet voting platforms utilize the same access methodologies and level of encryption used for major Internet banking sites. Although attempts can be made to compromise the system these security measures are typically able to obstruct them. As is the case with other Internet services however, this can not be fully guaranteed. Michael Geist (2010), Law Professor at the University of Ottawa and Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law has warned about the dangers of Internet voting. Democracy depends on a fair, accurate and transparent electoral process with outcomes that can be independently verified. Conventional voting accomplishes many of these goals private polling stations enable citizens to cast their votes anonymously, election-day scrutineers offer independent oversight and paperbased ballots provide a verifiable outcome that can be re-counted if necessary.2
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Geist, M. (2010, March 08). Geist: hackers, viruses threaten online voting validity. Thestar.com. Retrieved July 15, 2011, from http://www.thestar.com/news/sciencetech/technology/lawbytes/article/776382--geist-hackers-viruses-threaten-onlinevoting-validity
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... He warns that current Internet voting systems lack many of these essential features and that they are subject to denial-of-service attacks that shut down the election process, counterfeit websites, phishing attacks, hacks into the election system or the insertion of computer viruses that tamper with election results. He concludes by saying that in the zeal to increase voter turnout, the reliance on Internet voting could inadvertently place the validity of the election process at risk. In his paper (which was not in reaction to the above, rather to other Internet voting dissenters), Kelleher (2011) claims that experts believe that these problems have been solved by existing technology and even the most vocal of the anti-Internet voting extremists were permitted to examine the SERVE3 system, and praised it. He fervently concludes that yet, despite such evidence, the four dissenters and their ilk continue to irrationally proclaim that the sky will fall if Internet voting is implemented4 These passages are included in this report to show the divide of experts when it comes to Internet voting. Internet voting is an unsupervised form of voting, similar to telephone and vote-by-mail currently deployed by at least 150 Ontario municipalities. To staffs knowledge, none of the municipalities that deployed an unsupervised form of voting have experienced voter fraud or other process challenges which would sufficiently controvert an election. To assist in maintaining the integrity of the electoral process in an unsupervised voting environment, the Act provides that no person shall: x x x Interfere or attempt to interfere with an elector who is marking the ballot; Obtain or attempt to obtain, at a voting place, information about how an elector intends to vote or has voted; or Communicate any information obtained at a voting place about how an elector intends to vote or has voted.
Agenda Item # 10.
Any contravention of this law is subject to severe penalties ranging from fines to imprisonment or both. It should be understood that the potential for illegal activity exists with any voting system however, it should be realized that the opportunity for such infractions does increase with unsupervised voting. Internet voting procedures that have already been established by other municipalities address these various risks by building and maintaining system and process security measures relevant to both system administrator and voter. Some of these were noted at the start of this section. In Markham, voters were required to acknowledge their understanding of the Act provisions outlined above as part of the process, which was similar to taking an affidavit. As an additional security provision at a systems level, the platform was monitored (in a testing and real environment prior to, during and after the election) by an independent, third party information technology security firm. If Internet voting was employed by the City of Cambridge, the City would vigorously pursue any concerns raised in relation to the security of its Internet voting platform and should there be sufficient evidence presented of a violation of the Act, etc., would
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Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment Kelleher, Ph.D., W. J. (2011). Internet voting: the great security scare. Internet Voting Now! Retrieved July 15, 2011, from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1420344
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... endeavor to take the appropriate legal action as provided for in the Criminal Code 10. Agenda Item # of Canada. In order to address questions about security and risk of Internet voting, the Town of Markham contacted Dr. Henry Kim, York University Associate Professor of Information Systems and Management Science, to conduct a review of current studies and issues related to security and accessibility and his report supports the security and accessibility of Internet voting. Dr. Kims report is attached to this report as Appendix A. Trust The security issue leads directly into the next challenge - trust of the technology. According to Kelleher (2011) public trust is the single greatest obstacle to the implementation of an Internet voting system in the United States5 and I expect this holds true in Canada as well. Goodman, Pammett, and DeBardeleben (2010) analyzed Elections Canada survey data regarding the Canadian publics likelihood to vote by Internet and found that in 2000, 47 percent of respondents report being likely to vote online, in 2008, interest rose to 54 percent of respondents.6 Although this is an upward trend, there are still a significant proportion of respondents that are not likely to vote by Internet. Although reasons were not provided, I assume that trust is a significant reason but others may just prefer to get out to the polls once every four years to exercise their right to vote because they value the tradition. Turnout In the Statistics Canada (2011) survey about the reasons voters did not vote in the most recent Canadian federal election 27.7 percent said they were not interested. According to Kushner, Siegel and Stanwick (1997) proponents of local government often contend that it is closest to the people and therefore holds the greatest interest for the public. Yet voter turnout is consistently lower in municipal elections than in provincial or federal elections. Their study of municipal voting trends in Ontario also shows that voter turnout rates are lower in larger municipalities.7 Regarding turnout, their study found that voter turnout in all size categories of municipalities in Ontario decreased from 1982-1994, however, according to the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, the average voter turnout in Ontario municipal elections in 2003 was 40.16 percent, 2006 was 41.33 percent, and in 2010 the average voter turnout was 44.35 percent. The downward trend from 1982-1994 appears to have been reversed slightly when comparing that time period to the provincial average from 2003 to 2010. In the City of Cambridge, Dr. Robert Williams outlined voter turnout in Cambridge in his report Voter Turnout in the City of Cambridge A Synopsis and An Assessment as follows:
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Kelleher, Ph.D., W. J. (2011). Internet voting: the great security scare. Internet Voting Now! Retrieved July 15, 2011, from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1420344 Goodman, N., Pammett, J. H., & DeBardeleben, J. (2010). Internet voting: the canadian municipal experience. Canadian Parliamentary Review, Autumn, 13-21. Kushner, J., Siegel, D., & Stanwick, H. (1997). Ontario municipal elections: Voting trends and determinants of electoral success in a Canadian province. Canadian Journal of Political Science, 30(3), 539-553. Retrieved January 05, 2011, from www.jstor.org/stable/3232090
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... Municipal Election 2000 Cambridge Wards Ward Number 1 2 3 4 5 6
Agenda Item # 10.
Percentage Turnout 29.9 31.6 22.5 Acclamation Acclamation 27.6
Obviously, because of two acclamations, calculating aggregate voter turnout based on the ward races is impossible. The count for thr three candidates for Mayor, though, is 22,617 out of 75,290 electors, a turnout rate of 30 %. The four wards where races for City Councillor were held show a variation of 9 percentage points in the turn out rate. Municipal Election 2003 Cambridge Wards Ward Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 Percentage Turnout 21.2 23.3 17.1 20.1 28.9 21.8
In this election, the list of electors included 82,609 individuals. A total of 18,413 of them voted for candidates for City Council, a turnout rate of 22.3%. The actual number of electors who cast ballots in the 2003 election was fewer than in the 2000 election and the variation in turnout among the wards was more modest. Municipal Election 2006 Cambridge Wards Ward Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 Percentage Turnout 26.0 29.5 18.6 24.3 34.7 24.0
In the 2006 election, the list of electors included 85,547 individuals. A total of 22,511 of them voted for candidates for City Council, a turnout rate of 26.3%. This represents a significant increase in the number of votes cast but the variation among the wards increased.
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... Municipal Election 2010 Cambridge Wards Agenda Ward Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Item # 10.
Percentage Turnout 28.0 25.7 34.1 27.6 35.4 28.3 27.7 24.1
In this election, the list of electors included 81,096 individuals. A total of 23,099 of them voted for candidates for City Council, a turnout rate of 28.5% and a modest increase in absolute numbers from 2006. The number of ballots cast for Mayor was slightly higher which converts into a turnout rate of 28.9%. What deductions can be drawn from the City of Cambridge voter turnout figures information in regard to the City itself? 1. The highest voter turnout in these four elections coincide with a very close race for mayor (2000) when there was no incumbent candidate for that office. 2. The voter turnout rate in these four elections was lowest when the municipal election followed immediateky after a provincial general election (2003) but was highest when the municipal election preceded a federal election by a short time (2000). The former may suggest a degree of voter fatigue and/or the possibility that the municipal election was an anti-climax in the wake of a change of government at Queens Park. 3. The aggregate voter turnout rate across the City has increased in the last two municipal elections from the preceding election. 4. The list of electors in 2010 included approximately 5% fewer names than the list of electors in 2006 (resulting from the elimination of unkown citizens. The number of ballots cast in 2010 increased slightly and the aggregate turnout rate increased by a shae over two percentage points. (Source: Dr. Robert Williams Voter Turnout in the City of Cambridge A Synopsis and An Assessment pages 13 to 15 February 2012) There are a number of specific, oft-cited, and sometimes inter-dependent factors that impact, or arguably impact voter turnout, all to varying degrees. Andre Blais (2000) notes there are different factors such as mandatory voting laws, voter registration requirements, systems to maximize convenience for the electorate to cast a ballot, and size of the electoral population. There are also socio-economic and personal factors of voters such as age, education level, religiosity, amount of free time, economic conditions, level of political interest, and sense of duty to vote.8 Also there are factors
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Blais, A. (2000). To vote or not to vote?: the merits and limits of rational choice theory. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
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... which are beyond much control such as anticipated closeness of an election # 10. Agenda Item and weather. Karp and Banducci (2000) note that although theory suggests that reforms designed to make voting easier will increase turnout among those least likely to vote, the empirical evidence is mixed.9 Although some claim Internet voting will become the preferred voting method of the future10, it has not proven to increase overall voter turnout. Elections Canada commissioned a study by Goodman, Pammett, and DeBardeleben (2010) which noted that generally, the academic literature addressing electronic voting and turnout decline presents inconclusive results concerning whether extension of online voting has a positive effect on electoral participation. This study did however note that though some areas, such as the U.K., have not consistently noted increases, others, such as Estonia and Geneva as well as the Canadian municipalities, do report some instances of increased turnout.11 Their analysis of Markham and Peterborough is paraphrased in the following paragraph. When Internet voting was first used in 2003 in Markham the turnout was very similar to turnout in 2000 but advanced voter turnout increased approximately 300 percent suggesting that voters merely changed their method of casting a ballot. In 2003 turnout was 27 percent and this increased to 38 percent when Internet voting was used in 2006. The authors did not expand on other factors that may have been at play but did note to put this in perspective, voter turnout in most other Ontario municipalities declined during the 2003 election however it was noted elsewhere that the number of Internet voters remained largely unchanged. Turnout dropped back to 35.5 percent for 2010. Peterborough, like Markham, perceived Internet voting as a way to possibly increase turnout yet when Internet voting was first used in 2006, overall turnout was unchanged from 2003 (48 percent) and in 2010 turnout in Peterborough dropped to 44.2 percent or a 3.8 percent drop, even with the provincial average rising 3.02 percent. Of course, there are other factors which affect turnout and the Goodman et al (2010) study suggests 2003 turnout may have been artificially high because the ballot included a referendum question. An excerpt from Dr. Kims paper sums up the issue of Internet voting well. Inasmuch as (municipalities) must mitigate threats, (they) must also ensure that Internet voting opportunities are realized. A pertinent and timely report written for Elections Canada best characterizes this trade-off between risk and opportunity [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]: Careful examination of the literature on Internet voting as well as the pilot experiences of many jurisdictions suggests that both the extremely optimistic and pessimistic positions about the effects of Internet voting are overstated. Internet voting will not act as a panacea for the social causes responsible for electoral disengagement, nor will it remedy negative attitudes toward political
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Karp, J. A., & Banducci, S. A. (2000). Going postal: How all-mail elections influence turnout. Political Behaviour, 22(3), 223-239. Retrieved December 16, 2010, from www.jstor.org/stable/1520048 10 R. Michael Alvare z, Thad E. Hall (2004) Point, Click & Vote, The Future of Internet Voting, Brookings Institution Press 11 Goodman, N., Pammett, J. H., & DeBardeleben, J. (2010, February). A Comparative Assessment of Electronic Voting (Canada, Elections Canada). Retrieved April 26, 2011, from http://canada-europe-dialogue.ca/events/2010-01-26InternetVotingMaterials/AComparativeAssessmentofInternetVotingFINALFeb19-a.pdf
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... entities. It will, however, increase voting opportunities for electors and make Agenda Item casting a vote more accessible. On the other side, Internet voting will not erode democracy or result in vote buying and election fraud any more than does the existing system. Proposed Election Model 2014 Election The foregoing is intended to provide Council with balanced information on possible voting methods. If Council decides to proceed with Internet voting and optical scan voting, I would strongly recommend implementing telephone voting as well when the City implements Internet Voting as the increased costs to offer both methods is neglible. The City Clerk would be delivering the election as follows: x Online and Telephone voting offered during Advanced Voting Period and on Voting Day. On-Line and Telephone voting areas will be established throughout the municipality during the Advanced Voting Period to assist the electorate in casting their votes On-Line or by Telephone. In-line voting offered on Voting Day only. Use of optical scan vote tabulators for in-line voting on Voting Day. Implement the use of electronic voters list for Advanced Voting Period and Voting Day (this is our Datafix product). Implementation of Vote Anywhere/Anytime for in-line voting on Voting Day. No voting by mail.
# 10.
x x x x x
Staff feel that implementing this type of system provides a seamless integation of traditional poll station voting with an electronic voting solution which includes telephone and internet voting. The use of Internet and Telephone Voting would help to achieve the goal of engaging in transparent and accountable decision-making processes and actions by using technology to expand/enhance the delivery of on-line services. Financial Impact 2010 Election Budget Expense DRO/Poll Clerk Advertising Mileage Council Orientation Licences - Hardware Licences - Software Office Supplies Postage Printing Voters List Rental Poll Booths Printed Materials Sundry TOTAL
Budget 77,000 4,000 500 6,500 68,000 3,000 13,500 40,000 7,500 17,000 18,000 5,000 260,000
Actual 61,050 13,545 829 1,966 73,253 2,976 9,262 24,163 2,671 2,450 31,317 1,260 224,742
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Agenda Item # 10.

Proposed 2014 Budget for Internet/Telephone/Paper Ballot
Expense DRO/Poll Clerk Advertising Mileage Council Orientation Licences - Hardware Licences - Software Office Supplies Postage Printing Voters List Rental Poll Booths Printed Materials Sundry TOTAL
Budget 70,000 10,000 1,000 6,500 230,000 0 10,000 5,000 0 8,000 18,000 5,000 363,500
(Source of the $230,000 Electronic Voting Options for the 2014 Municipal Elections Slide 28 June 5, 2012 84,000 electors X $2.75 this includes training for help line staff, auditor, event set up, onsite assistance, 800 service charges for voting; voter information letter, design, setup, production and postage) Added convenience for the electorate comes at a cost. If Council directs optical scan paper ballot voting with the addition of Internet and Telephone voting the overall costs for delivering the election will not decrease, rather they will increase. To provide Council with a rough estimate, based on the number of eligible electors from the 2010 election, additional costs to provide Internet and Telephone voting would be approximately $103,500 plus amounts for increased education of the electorate. Based on our Reserve Fund funding our annual contribution and reserve fund balance will be sufficient to fund On-Line, Telephone and In-Line Voting. In 2015 our annual contribution will need to be adjusted to fund the costs for the 2018 Municipal Election.
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... Proposed 2014 Budget for Internet and Telephone Voting ONLY Expense DRO/Poll Clerk Advertising Mileage Council Orientation Licences - Hardware Licences - Software Office Supplies Postage Printing Voters List Rental Poll Booths Printed Materials Sundry TOTAL Budget 0 10,000 1,000 6,500 230,000 0 10,000 5,000 0 0 5,000 5,000 272,500
Agenda Item # 10.
(Source of the $230,000 Electronic Voting Options for the 2014 Municipal Elections Slide 28 June 5, 2012 84,000 electors X $2.75 this includes training for help line staff, auditor, event set up, onsite assistance, 800 service charges for voting; voter information letter, design, setup, production and postage) If Council directed a method of election which does not require the establishment of voting locations staff would recommend telephone and Internet voting. This however would also come at an additional cost. To provide Council with a rough estimate, based on the number of eligible electors from the 2010 election, additional costs would be approximately $12,500. There would be a reduction of expenses by eliminating the need for voting locations, reducing staffing as well as eliminating other costs such as ballot printing. Clerks Division staff will continue to meet with other municipalities to review their best practices with respect to On-Line, Telephone and In-Line Voting (specifically the Town of Markham and the City of Stratford). Further, if Council would prefer a demonstration of this technology this could be arranged. IT Comments: Legal Comments: Accessibility Committee Comments:
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APPENDIXA
Agenda Item # 10.
A Study of Internet Voting Security Risks and Accessibility Opportunities for the Town of Markham
A Study Prepared for the Returning Officer, Town of Markham
March 23, 2010
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... Executive Summary
Agenda Item # 10.
In this study, we offer a perspective on the risks for the Town of Markham associated with conducting two-step internet voting in combination with traditional Voting Day voting place voting for the upcoming 2010 Municipal Elections. This perspective results from analyzing up-to-date thought leadership and academically-oriented works from internet voting researchers in combination with our own analysis and lessons learned from studying internet voting risks prior to Markhams 2006 Municipal Elections. The purpose of this current study is to apply the perspective to inform the design and implementation of the Towns internet voting system, in particular to inform the selection of the vendor, whose product will form the basis of this system. Within this scope are analyses of literature on security risks and accessibility opportunities of internet voting. The following highlights our perspective on designing the Markhams internet voting system to be even more auditable, secure, and recoverable, while ensuring appropriate voter rights: x Auditability o Working with the vendor, the Town should establish procedures to demonstrate an audit trail for internet votes. We especially recommend independent tests be conducted by the vendor and the Town to demonstrate that what is digitally recorded (and printed, if need be) during the 2010 Municipal Election will be in fact what the voter voted.
Security o The vendor should have the latest tools and techniques for detecting internet attack attempts. These should be thoroughly documented. One of the most powerful and subtle deterrents against attacks on the election is the fact that such activities are indeed criminal offences punishable in the jurisdiction where they occur. This message should be conveyed clearly to internet voters. For the special case where apparent, even inadvertent coercion may result due to language difficulties, the Town should consider translating verbiage about what is/is not coercion in different languages. However, outsider hackers and foreign agencies are not subject to that deterrent. Working with the vendor, the Town should be able to identify and analyze in real-time anomalous accesses (especially from non-local sources) to voting servers and anomalous voting patterns.
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Agenda Item # 10.

x Voter rights o Voters should be made aware of the criminal implications of acts like coercion, intimidation, vote selling, bidding, and switching that corrupt their voting rights. For the special case where apparent coercion may result due to language difficulties, the Town should consider translating notes about what is and is not coercion in different languages. Again this could be in paper material or on the municipal website.
Recoverability o Working with the vendor, the Town should document a recovery procedure. The procedure should address questions like, Given that a known or even an unknown threat has materialized, what are the steps to recover the integrity of the 2010 Municipal Election.
We believe that Markham is in a unique position vis--vis other Canadian (even North American) municipalities to mitigate security risks of internet voting while leveraging accessibility opportunities. This position is due primarily to the collective, successful experiences and lessons-learned, all of which were gathered through the hard work of Towns IT staff, officials, voters, and Councilors and campaigners. In addition, the principle that it must be possible to recover from any internet voting mishap by Voting Day has guided the design of the internet voting process and procedures, and this helps to mitigate security risks. The relatively high level of comfort with technology, educational level, income level, and level of broadband (high speed internet) access of its residents vis--vis other Canadian municipalities place Markham on the definite have side of the Digital Divide. This means that Towns residents are more apt than other places to conduct internet voting. It also means that this Digital Divide advantage can be leveraged to make voting more accessible to seniors, disabled, and non-English speakers. Finally many have expressed concern that internet voting will obviate or perturb the extemporaneous water cooler networking that happens around voting places. Such networking activities serve a subtle but useful role in the voting process, and it is not clear what effect internet voting will have. We posit that the positive effects of what is effectively a Voting Day social networking event all over the Town could be mimicked or complemented by an evolving social networking community online within which voters and campaigners interact before, during, and after an election. Internet voting would represent the cornerstone piece for building such a community. By virtue of its internet voting advantages, Markham is well positioned to build up from internet voting to a more social networking paradigm for engaging constituents.
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Agenda Item # 10.

Summary of Findings
In November 2006, the Town of Markham conducted municipal elections. As in the elections of 2003, Markham successfully provided internet voting as an option. Also as in 2003, the particular mode of internet voting adopted in 2003 entailed a two step process (1st in which the potential voter registered to vote specifically online, and 2nd in which the vote is cast online) for advanced voting only. Prior to the 2006 elections, we conducted a risk analysis of different remote voting modes: 1) Traditional voting place voting only (with advanced voting); 2) 1 step internet voting + traditional voting; 3) 2 step internet voting + traditional voting; and 4) mail-in only. After quantifying risk profiles, it was concluded that the 2 step internet voting + traditional voting represented the lowest risk profile next to the traditional voting place only alternative. A noteworthy product of the analysis was the conclusion that that internet voting mode represented a lower risk profile than the mail-in only mode, a mode whose risk profile most in the elections community are generally comfortable with. Given findings like this, it was recommended that Markham proceed with the same framework for internet voting as it had done in 2003. After two successful iterations, Markham is set once again to conduct the two-step internet voting + advanced voting for the 2010 municipal elections. The scope of this current study is not to assess the risk profiles of voting modes once again (as the fidelity of internet voting for the Town has been demonstrated). Rather, this current study offers a perspective on the internet voting risks for the Town of Markham for the 2010 Municipal Elections. This perspective is comprised of up-to-date thought leadership and academically-oriented works from internet voting researchers. The purpose of this study is to apply the perspective to inform the design and implementation of Markhams Internet voting system, in particular to inform the selection of the vendor, whose product will form the basis of this system. Within this scope are analyses of literature on security risks and accessibility opportunities of internet voting. Below, we outline some recommendations based on our examination of the literature and applying it to the Markham context. Auditability x It is recalled that the City of Halifax had detailed procedures for demonstrating a paper trail for online voting. And voting systems vendors often have the facility to even print a paper ballot for each online vote cast. Markham can establish similar procedures and have contingency ballot printing strategies. The question however is whether what is digitally recorded (and printed, if need be) is in fact what the voter voted. Audits should have been conducted, or should be conduct-able, to ascertain this. There should be three separate audits: first-party (the vendor tests the correctness of digitized data), second-party testing (the Town of Markham independently conducts a test), and third-party, live (perhaps a random sample of those who voted online are asked to verify that what has been recorded is in fact what he/she had voted.)
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x The vendor should be able to make real virtual objects. For example, the vendor should be able to print a completed paper ballot for each online vote, if need be. Or, it should be possible to print off master lists. Though this capability may seem superfluous, the majority of citizens (which aptly characterizes major Town stakeholders) are comforted knowing that they would be able to see, touch and feel artifacts like completed ballots, which they intimately associate with voting. The voter should be given the option to print the screen, which shows their voting choice. The printout would serve as verification for the voter, and represents a subtle means to make the vote more concrete. It may be possible to even solicit these ballots using a statistical sampling plan if a post-election audit is called. Obviously, the procedure for doing this must be weighed and carefully documented. Markham can employ parallel testing. That is, under another random sampling plan, fictitious votes may be entered into the system. These can be audited from beginning to end. It is recognized that such testing is done before the system is live, but doing this during the voting period may add additional audit credibility. If this is done, it is crucial that there are documented and tested means to ensure that these votes are never treated as legitimate ones.
Agenda Item # 10.
Security x The vendor should have the latest tools and techniques for detecting internet attack attempts. These should be thoroughly documented. It is desirable that the documentation should show each type of potential attack, how the system would recognize them, and then how the system will counter that attack. The vendor should have techniques to prevent and correct for pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks. In addition, the vendor should specify how successful attacks of these sorts, when conducted in small-scale (i.e. affects a limited number of votes), can be remediated. One of the most powerful, and subtle, deterrents against attacks on the election is that such activities are criminal offences punishable in the jurisdiction where they occur. However, outsider hackers and foreign agencies are not subject to that deterrent. Relative to, say, the US federal elections, municipal elections in Canada are arguably low-profile, low-impact, and out of the radar for many potential, especially non-local, attackers. The Town should look-out to if some change puts the Towns internet voting on the radar of these attackers. The implication then is for the vendor and Towns IT staff to be mindful of a sudden increase in profile of Markhams election or a sudden increase in controversy or contentiousness in political issues surrounding the election, so as to be especially vigilante for anomalous internet voting patterns after such increases. A usable proxy that outsiders may have an insidious interest in Markham elections may be the locales of IP addresses attributed to votes cast. In the two-step mode, the voter must receive two separate pieces of mail on different dates at their home address. Also Markhams location in the
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populous GTA area means that servers for nearly all of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve voters homes should be geographically close to and clustered within or near Markham. The vendor should leverage this phenomenon. That is, does the vendor have methods to detect patterns that seem anomalous in the face of this phenomenon? x There should be documented procedures between the IT staff at the Town and the vendor to identify, communicate, and analyze anomalous internet voting occurrences.
Agenda Item # 10.
Voter Rights x Either in the paper material that is sent to potential internet voters or even on municipal websites in which they vote, voters should be made aware of the criminal implications of acts like coercion, intimidation, vote selling, bidding, and switching that corrupt their voting rights. For the special case where apparent coercion may result due to language difficulties, the Town should consider translating information about what is and is not coercion in different languages. Again this could be in paper material or on the Websites. If not already in their standard procedures, the Town should conduct some usability tests. This is especially important if the user interfaces provided by the vendor differ substantially from those of the 2003 and 2006 elections, and if additional information (different from 2003 and 2006) needs to be presented to the voters. In particular, ways to make the task of voting easier and more seamless once the potential internet voter has received their password should be explored. In addition, usability testing should also be extended to examine all paper documentation that voters receivee.g. is it easy to find the directions, or how should alternate language instructions be presented.
Recoverability x The Town and the vendor should work together to document recovery procedures. Given that a known or even an unknown threat has materialized, what are the steps to recover the integrity of the election? What is the line between some threat that can be contained in small-scale (i.e. some voters are requested to re-vote online or vote at the polls) or an attack that requires voiding all online voting? How will that decision be made? How will online voters be made aware? These are some of the issues that need to be addressed and documented. It is recognized that practically, not everything needs to be documented; a key role of elections officials after all is to effectively deal with ad hoc situations. However, recall that the public has a heightened sense of security risk pertaining to internet voting, and for rare events like a successful attack of online voting, knowing how to deal with attack consequences is more important than prevention. Markham has developed very good procedures and processes for internet voting, so it is not anticipated that there should be many refinements to those procedures and processes. It is recommended however that the Town consider documentation of internet voting recovery procedures as one of these refinements.
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x In general, the vendor should specify the delineation between a successful attack that can be corrected for in small-scale, versus a successful attack that is considered large-scale, and may prompt voiding of all or some part of internet voting.
Agenda Item # 10.
Inasmuch as Markham must mitigate threats, it must also ensure that internet voting opportunities are realized. A pertinent and timely report written for Elections Canada best characterizes this trade-off between risk and opportunity [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]: Careful examination of the literature on internet voting as well as the pilot experiences of many jurisdictions suggests that both the extremely optimistic and pessimistic positions about the effects of internet voting are overstated. Internet voting will not act as a panacea for the social causes responsible for electoral disengagement, nor will it remedy negative attitudes toward political entities. It will, however, increase voting opportunities for electors and make casting a vote more accessible. On the other side, Internet voting will not erode democracy or result in vote buying and election fraud any more than does the existing system. There are numerous security risks of internet voting, many due to vulnerabilities inherent in internet use. Many have outlined that these risks cannot be completely eliminated. In our opinion, security risks are mitigated by 3 factors favourable to the Town: 1. Prior experience: The Town has accumulated expertise, documentation, and lessons-learned from conducting internet voting twice before. The Town has experienced normal turnover both at the IT staff level and in election staff since the 2006 Municipal Elections. Nevertheless, we believe the collective expertise on internet voting remains within the Town. Hence, it is well prepared to choose the most appropriate vendor with whom to partner to develop the IT systems, processes, and procedures for internet voting in 2010. 2. Recoverability: In our 2006 analysis, we quantified 45 threats to internet voting. Some were due to remote hackers and other IS related origins, but many were threats faced regardless of mode of voting. For internet voting, the two step process (rather than one step), and security features applied by the vendor and the Town largely mitigated, but not completely eliminated, the risks. Even if vulnerabilities were successfully exploited in large scale, Markham always had the safety valve of voiding results (thus recovering) of internet voting prior to Voting Day. The literature on internet voting security recognizes that designing for recoverability is a more pragmatic approach than designing for prevention [Coleman 2005; Hole & Netland 2010]. 3. Limited Visibility: In our 2006 analysis, we surmised that the most likely vulnerabilities to be successfully exploited would be at a small scalee.g. inadvertent mishaps or dubious voters at one locationand more likely to happen at voting places than over internet voting. Elections officials know how to deal with threats like these. However of greater concern are the hackers from some distant land. We pegged the probability of a success attack as extremely low. Nevertheless, leveraging the efficiency of internet use, they can inflict large scale damage, elections officials are not accustomed to dealing with these threats. Further, applicable deterrents, say, to a GTA resident like being charged criminally and ostracized by the community are not as compelling to these hackers. Even though the overall election will likely recover from
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a large scale hacker attack, public confidence would be shaken. Having said that, an election in a suburban municipality in Canada is likely to fly under the radar of these would-be hackers. The literature on internet voting security recognizes that visibility of an election is a large factor in whether it is targeted by outsiders for attacks [Mohen & Glidden 2001]. On the other side, there are five factors that give Markham accessibility and participation advantages. 1. Markhams Demographics: According to literature, the demographic of the likeliest internet voter is characterized as relatively more comfortable with technology, more affluent, more educated and younger than the demographic for the most active voters [Caporusso, Buzzi, Fele, Peri, Sartori, & di Sociologia 2006; Reniu 2005]. The median age in Markham is 38.1, which is below the provincial median of 39 [Town of Markham 2009], and Ontario has the lowest median age of any province. In addition, the percentage of the population over 65 in Markham is lower than the provincial average of 13.6%. Markhams claim as Canadas High Technology Capital strongly implies that many of the workers who work in Markham also live there. Median household income in Markham at $77,163 is considerably higher than the Ontario median of $66,600 [Statistics Canada 2009]. 37% of eligibly aged (>18 years of age) Markham residents have or are working on university degrees [Town of Markham Economic Development Department 2009], which is significantly higher than the provincial mean of 25%. What this all means is that Markham has one of the most internet voting friendly populations of any municipality in Ontario. In our opinion, the only comparably friendly Ontario municipalities are Waterloo and Kanata, and to a less extent, Richmond Hill and Oakville. 2. Lack of Election Contentiousness: There is literature that states that internet voting and other convenience voting options (e.g. mail-in voting) have a statistically significant impact on overall voter turnout in lowly-contested or non-contentious elections [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]. In these cases, many who would have participated in heavier-contested elections just dont get as engaged. In these situations, internet voting may be the difference between getting these folks to vote or not. This is not to categorically imply that Markham always has lowly-contested elections. We point this out because generally municipal elections have not insignificant amounts of acclamations of incumbents. 3. Accessibility to seniors, disabled, and non-English speakers: Digital Divide refers to the gulf that exists between those who have widespread, convenient access to the internet and those who dont. The haves are more affluent, better educated, and younger. In addition, in Canada, people in urban areas have much greater access than those in rural areas [Sawada, Cossette, Wellar, & Kurt 2006]. Clearly between Markhams demographics and its location in a heavily urban area, it is a have in the digital divide. Markham has the opportunity to leverage this advantageous position to use internet voting to increase accessibility to specific groups. Interestingly, the most likely beneficiaries of increased voting accessibility are seniors. Inasmuch as they as a group end up on the have-not side of the digital divide, they are also very willing to vote, and willing to vote online. To illustrate, Peterborough has the second largest population rate of seniors in Canada. Yet, 70% of internet voters in 2006 were over 45 and the largest percentage of these were aged 55 to 64. Relative to other age groups, seniors tend to fit the second bill of
Agenda Item # 10.
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likely internet voters: those that are more civically engaged and hence likely to vote one way or another [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008].
Agenda Item # 10.
Internet voting would seem to be extremely convenient for the disabled, but beyond conjecture, there is little in the way of research about this topic. As well, there is little research about internet voting for non-English speaking voters. This is pertinent for Markham where there are as many residents whose mother tongues are South Asian and Chinese languages as there are native English speakers. These groups are probably not steadfast voters, but they probably also may not fall on the have-not side of the Digital Divide. As a municipality, Markham falls on the have side of the Digital Divide, so it has the opportunity to leverage this position to facilitate voting accessibility to seniors, disabled, and non-English speakers. In order to provide this accessibility, the Town must also develop strategies to market internet voting differently to three very different groups. 4. Prior Experience Town Officials Perspective: By the end of 2010, Markham will have engaged in three iterations of internet voting. That is more experience than any other municipality in Canada. Markham has proceeded cautiously: they have always had the two-step, advanced poll only internet voting and have not sought to cut resources at voting places. In contrast, according to [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009], by their second iteration, Halifax had gone to one-step, continuous (including Election Day voting) internet voting, and incorporated a candidate module wherein candidates could see voting status of registered voters. For their next iteration in 2012, they have apparent plans to reduce number of voting places. Markham can consider changing scope as well, perhaps paring down costs associated with voting place voting. Markhams prior successful experiences (assuming that 2010 will be successful) have earned it credibility to expand scope of internet voting or pare down scope of voting place voting. 5. Prior Experience Candidates Perspective: internet voting has perturbed campaigning [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]. In Markham, canvassers were told that those in the household had already voted. In Halifax, candidates had voter lists with updated information on who had voted over the internet, which led to efficiently winnowing and targeting undecided voters. Having gone through two iterations, Markham candidates should know better how to account for internet voting in their campaigns. That is, their prior experiences could help them lower campaign costs per voter, and yet increase their effectiveness. We believe that Markham has reached an enviable position in its internet voting evolution. Through two iterations, it has developed and refined voting processes and procedures to the extent that it mitigates internet voting risks, yet can pursue ways to increase accessibility. Internet voting has raised voter participation (or kept it steady when participation in surrounding municipalities decreased). Internet voters are also more satisfied with the ease and convenience of voting online. The incremental cost of running additional internet voting instances is likely to be decreasing, and the Town can even contemplate paring down resources applied to traditional voting place voting. The candidates can redeploy their campaigning resources to be more efficient and effective. Now, we put forth then that the low hanging fruit of internet voting has been picked. In our opinion, the challenge for subsequent internet voting instances is to build from what has been achieved. Halifax serves as an example [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]:
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[C]andidates were able to keep track of supporters during campaign timelines using an internet candidate module. This allowed for the generation of multiple support lists such as a special list of undecided voters or categorization by area (i.e. street), which was a useful vehicle for mobilization. It also reduced the need for the traditional candidates representative function because parties were able to track participation on-line.
Agenda Item # 10.
Internet voting served as a driver for re-thinking and improving campaigning and canvassing strategies. There are other complementary innovations that use IT and the internet to enrich the relationship between candidates and voters. For example, through the Smartvote Website, Swiss municipal politicians fill out questionnaires that collect their positions on issues weeks prior to an election. Potential voters can then match their views on issues with those of the politicians, and even analyze and visualize politicians positions [Thurman & Gasser 2009]. Also, the politicians are able to post their positions and other news and update their postings. In traditional voting, there are few contact points between candidates and their constituents. Certainly the vote itself is one; a conversation while canvassing is another. A website mediates, enriches, and keeps persistent a personalizable (as opposed to a generic sign on the neighbours lawn) dialogue between the candidates and their constituents. Businesses right now are exploring strategies to maintain dialogue with their customers and they are finding that social mediablogs, Wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmarking sitesprovide them this opportunity. Blogs and social media groups are now heavily put to use by politicians in US, Canada and elsewhere. Markhams internet voting experiences represent a platform from which information technology mediated conversations with constituents can be developed and fostered. Ultimately, its symbolism as a platform for more personal and enriching interactions with government represents a subtle but potentially powerful additional rationale for internet voting at the Town of Markham. [I]n a dynamic social and technological environment inaction can have negative consequences. If cultures of shopping, banking, playing games and socialising are increasingly moving online, the failure of the political sphere to move in tandem risks confining it to eccentric marginality. This might be the strongest argument for voting online: the symbolic message is delivered that democracy is consistent with contemporary culture. The risk of such symbolism for the political elite and a democratic opportunity for citizens is that online voting will stimulate a public appetite for a more interactive system of representation before and after elections. [Coleman 2005]
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Agenda Item # 10.

Introduction
Voting is a fundamental right and privilege of democracy. When this privilege is not exercised, one reason may be that being at a voting station during certain hours in a given day may not be feasible or inconvenient for many. Even though it seems reasonable that providing more convenient ways to vote may increase voter participation, the following statistic is nevertheless surprising. 37% of voters cast their ballots before Voting Day [of the US federal elections in 2008], either in-person at early voting centers (18%) or by mail, mainly via absentee ballots (19%). The elderly, individuals with disabilities, and better-educated voters were more likely to use these convenience voting methods. [Alvarez, Ansolabehere, Berinsky, Lenz, Stewart III, & Hall 2009] In the highest profile election in the world, more than of the voters chose methods that gave them the convenience to vote irrespective of time and distance! Of course, the internet enables transcending time and distance. Ostensibly then, internet voting is the perfect union between the convenience and accessibility that voters seek with the ubiquitous infrastructure upon which votes can be cast costeffectively and efficiently. Beyond efficiency and convenience, there is an even more compelling argument for internet voting. [I]n a dynamic social and technological environment inaction can have negative consequences. If cultures of shopping, banking, playing games and socialising are increasingly moving online, the failure of the political sphere to move in tandem risks confining it to eccentric marginality. This might be the strongest argument for voting online: the symbolic message is delivered that democracy is consistent with contemporary culture. The risk of such symbolism for the political elite and a democratic opportunity for citizens is that online voting will stimulate a public appetite for a more interactive system of representation before and after elections. [Coleman 2005] Alas, internet use has drawbacks, mainly security concerns. The real barrier to success is not a lack of vision, skill, resources, or dedication; it is the fact that, given the current Internet and PC security technology, and the goal of a secure, allelectronic remote voting system, the [US Department of Defense] has essentially taken upon an impossible task [to meet that goal]. (Jefferson et al. 2004) Given this, why should the Town of Markham, or for that matter any government, employ internet voting? This study addresses that important question. It especially reports on the state of the art in thought leadership and technologies regarding internet voting and the assessment of its risks. It also draws from authoritative sources to comment on the concomitant Internet voting as a cornerstone platform for edemocracy vs. Internet voting as a security and privacy threat trade-off debate.
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To be sure, internet voting is vulnerable to threats. However, threats like these are often more susceptible to perception than to likelihood of occurrence. Social aspects of security of information systems are often discussed in terms of actual security and perceived security. This may lead to the hypothesis that e-voting is controversial because in paper voting, actual and perceived security coincide, whereas they do not in electronic systems. [Pieters 2006] A gray swan [as opposed to a black swan] is a large-impact and rare event that is somewhat predictable, but overlooked by major stakeholders Examples of negative gray swans are hurricanes, earthquakes, US sub-prime crisis, and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on Estonia. Because gray swans are rare, its not practical to estimate the likelihood of these events; rather, focus on consequences rather than likelihoods. [Hole & Netland 2010] These two excerpts illustrate the challenges in assessing risks of internet voting. For public officials and the general public, internet voting represents something unknown. People tend to embellish its risks due to their inherent cognitive difficulty in dealing with uncertainty. The perception of risk is further heightened because of historical rarity of internet voting mishaps; a successful execution of an internet voting threat can be considered a gray swan event because it really hasnt happened on a large-scale, resulting in a large impact. Colloquially, it can be said that risks of internet voting are unknown (actual and perceived security do not coincide) and unknowable (gray swan). Yet, the second excerpt provides what is arguably the overarching principle for assuring the integrity of internet voting: focus on consequences of any negative gray swan event, be it a malicious attack from an insider or a hacker, or a chain of unanticipated software/hardware failures. Exactly along this vein, in 2003 and 2006, Markhams election officials and IT team had stressed the importance of recoverability in developing the Towns internet voting systems, procedures, and processes. That is, as long as unternet voting takes place as part of advanced voting, the results of internet voting can be voided if an executed internet threat makes that necessary. Then online voters can be alerted that a threat has been executed that voided their online votes, and requested to vote at voting places.
Agenda Item # 10.
Internet Voting: Security Risks

In 2004, a group of researchers analyzed the risks and vulnerabilities of SERVE, a system developed experimentally by the US Department of Defense [Jefferson, Rubin, Simons, & Wagner 2004]. The endgoal of SERVE was to provide overseas US citizens and military personnel to vote online for different types of elections ranging from military ones to the federal election. The recommendation of the researchers led to stoppage of SERVE development in mid-project. The researchers were concerned with the following: no voter-verified audit trail; well-known cyber-attacks (insider attacks, denial of service attacks, spoofing, automated vote buying, virus attacks on voter PCs); the attacks could have large-scale impacts and be launched by sophisticated enemy agencies outside of the reach of US law; a reasonably non-zero probability (i.e. extremely low) of undetected attack; and vulnerabilities cannot be fixed in SERVE, since they are in effect vulnerabilities inherent in internet use. The researchers conclude that the
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real barrier to success is not a lack of vision, skill, resources, or dedication; it is the fact that, given the current internet and PC security technology, and the goal of a secure, all-electronic remote voting system, the [DoD] has essentially taken upon an impossible task [Jefferson, Rubin, Simons, & Wagner 2004].
Agenda Item # 10.
Elections officials at the Town have made compelling arguments for conducting internet voting for the Town based on factors such as lowered costs in present and future elections of having fewer voting palces and personnel, reduced carbon footprint of ballots and other papers, accessibility, and contribution to the branding of Markham as innovative and technologically-savvy. We assume for this study that the pros outweigh the cons. However to maintain recoverability in the face of the legitimate concerns raised by analyzers of SERVE, the Town should be mindful of the following: x It is recalled that the City of Halifax had detailed procedures for demonstrating a paper trail for online voting. And voting systems vendors often have the facility to even print a paper ballot for each online vote cast. The Town can establish similar procedures and have contingency ballot printing strategies. The question however is whether what is digitally recorded (and printed, if need be) is in fact what the voter voted. Audits should be conduct-able, to ascertain this. There should be three separate audits: first-party (the vendor tests the correctness of digitized data), second-party testing (the Town of Markham independently conducts a test), and third-party, live (perhaps a random sample of those who voted online are asked to verify that what has been recorded is in fact what he/she had voted.) The vendors should have the latest tools and techniques for detecting internet attack attempts. These should be thoroughly documented. It is desirable that the documentation should show each type of potential attack, how the system would recognize them, and then how the system will counter that attack. The Town and the vendor should work together to document recovery procedures. Given that a known or even an unknown threat has materialized, what are the steps to recover the integrity of the election? What is the line between some threat that can be contained in small-scale (i.e. some voters are requested to re-vote online or vote at the polls) or an attack that requires voiding all online voting? How will that decision be made? How will online voters be made aware? These are some of the issues that need to be addressed and documented. It is recognized that practically, not everything needs to be documented; a key role of elections officials after all is to effectively deal with ad hoc situations. However, recall that the public has a heightened sense of security risk pertaining to internet voting, and for gray swan events like a successful attack of online voting, knowing how to deal with attack consequences is more important than prevention. The Town has developed very good procedures and processes for internet voting, so it is not anticipated that there should be many refinements to those procedures and processes. It is recommended however that the Town consider documentation of internet voting recovery procedures as one of these refinements. Those who examined SERVE were especially wary of the high-profile, high-impact nature of the US federal election, for which SERVE was to be ultimately used. The high-profile nature would tempt glory-seeking, malicious hackers; the high-impact nature would tempt enemies of the nation. One of the most powerful, and subtle, deterrents against attacks on the election is that
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such activities are criminal offences punishable in the jurisdiction where they occur. However, outsider hackers and foreign agencies are not subject to that deterrent. Relative to SERVE, municipal elections in Canada are arguably low-profile, low-impact, and out of the radar for many potential, especially non-local, attackers. Markham should look-out to see if some change puts the Towns internet voting on the radar of these attackers. The implication then for the vendor and Markhams IT staff is to be mindful of a sudden increase in profile of the Towns elections or a sudden increase in controversy or contentiousness in political issues surrounding the election, so as to be especially vigilante for anomalous internet voting patterns after such increases. Similar conclusions as SERVEs analyzers are drawn by [Enguehard & Lehn 2009]. Much like Markhams 2006 study, Enguehard examines the vulnerabilities of three remote voting methodspostal voting with and without automated counting, and internet voting. In sum, they conclude that whereas larger scale threats cannot go undetected for postal voting, internet-based attacks could, and the inherent design of the internet means that this threat cannot be fully eliminated. This research also discusses two more recent methods of internet attack: pharming, wherein the voter votes at a fake site, which may collect or pharm the vote; and man-in-the-middle, wherein a fake site impersonates the voting site to the voter, and impersonates the voter to the voting site. x The implication for Markham is to ensure that the vendor has techniques to prevent and correct for pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks. In addition, the vendor should specify how successful attacks of these sorts, when conducted in small-scale (i.e. affects a limited number of votes), can be remediated. In general, the vendor should specify the delineation between a successful attack that can be corrected for in small-scale, versus a successful attack that is considered large-scale, and may prompt voiding of all or some part of internet voting.
Agenda Item # 10.
Finally, Internet voting radicalises the automation process by handling dematerialised objects. The voting process is displaced from the real world to a virtual world where the observations made directly through our perceptions (sight, touch, etc..) do not apply and which is outside the reach of the majority of citizens. [Enguehard & Lehn 2009]. Having stated this, perhaps the majority of the citizens can be reached if the difference between the actual and the virtual can be narrowed, thus narrowing the gap between perceived and actual security of internet voting. x The vendor should be able to make real virtual objects. For example, the vendor should be able to print a completed paper ballot for each online vote, if need be. Or, it should be possible to print off master lists. Though this capability may seem needless, majority of citizens are comforted knowing that they would be able to see, touch and feel artifacts like completed ballots, which they intimately associate with voting.
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It is important to reiterate that the concerns raised by [Jefferson, Rubin, Simons, & Wagner 2004] and [Enguehard & Lehn 2009] about internet voting are based on the assumption of a one-step internet vote. Though hacker risks cannot be eliminated entirely, using a two-step method considerably mitigates the risk of hacker threats like pharming and man-in-the-middle. Moreover, proponents of online voting claim that the risks have been exaggerated and that such panics follow most technological innovations [Coleman 2005]. Ultimately, the concept of e-government is truly credible only when it supports online voting. But its important to note that internet voting need not be a black and white issue [Coleman 2005]. In the polarised debate about online voting, risk tends to be presented as if online elections will either be ruinous to, or panaceas for, existing problems of democracy. In reality, most successful processes operate on the basis of low risk rather than no risk. Managing risks is more achievable than seeking to eliminate them. Opponents of online voting sometimes depict existing electoral practices as being risk-free. In fact, fraudulence has always existed to some extent in paper-ballot elections; in Northern Ireland it has been widespread. The major problems in the US 2000 election were caused by voting machines and counting methods that had been used for over thirty years. As with other areas in which risks need to be explained or discussed with the public, communication should be characterised by openness and credibility In the case of online voting, this entails recognition of the fact that some risks are greater and more intractable than others and that, because all activity is potentially hazardous, it is necessary to think in terms of trade-offs rather than risk-free ends. Instead of a polarised debate between technophiles and luddites, perhaps online voting requires a more mature public debate about the level of risk that is acceptable in modernising elections. Where does that trade-off lie? Simplistically, we offer our opinion that if an election is sufficiently highprofile and high-impact, that trade-off point may be neared. x It seems abstract to somehow associate the extent to which an election can be considered high profile, and high impact to online voting. A usable proxy may be the locales of IP addresses attributed to votes cast. In the two-step mode, the voter must receive two separate pieces of mail on different dates at their home address. Also Markhams location in the populous GTA area means that servers for nearly all of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that serve voters homes should be geographically close to and clustered within or near Markham. The vendor should leverage this phenomenon. That is, does the vendor have methods to detect patterns that seem anomalous in the face of this phenomenon? There should be documented procedures between the IT staff at the Town and the vendor to identify, communicate, and analyze anomalous internet voting occurrences.
Agenda Item # 10.
There are additional technical issues [Ballas 2006] that the vendor must resolve. Voter authenticity requires that only eligible voters who have passed through the two-step process may vote online. As
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previous mentioned, attacks like man-in-the-middle threaten voter authenticity, but there is a caveat to this risk [Ballas 2006]: Such a threat is significant and possible in major elections (e.g. US presidential election) due to its high popularity as a target of attacks, but it is argued that it is not a particular threat in smaller elections where the stakes and spread of the voters is different [Mohen & Glidden 2001]. System accountability means that the vendor is accountable for identifying and correcting system malfunctions and manipulation attempts in a timely manner. System availability means that the internet voting system should be online when a voter wants to vote. Internet threats like Denial of Service (DoS) attacks as well as non-malicious issues like malfunctions and other mishaps can threaten system availability. The previously-stated notion of recoverability as well as providing many dates for internet voting largely mitigate this risk, although the loss of popular support may result if downtime ends up being substantial. Another issue, system disclosability refers to the transparency of hardware and software for third party verification. The innards of a vendors systems like programmatic code and technical specifications constitute the vendors intellectual property. Not surprisingly then, these details are not disclosed, and hence many argue that it is not possible to sufficiently scrutinize internet voting. Proponents of open source software in which the programmatic code is available for scrutiny tout it as a fix for system disclosability since increased scrutiny should incentivize the vendors to write better software; its opponents say that the only useful open source software already form the basis of vendors software anyway. The true remedy for system disclosability lies in due diligence. The vendors must exercise due diligence in delivering a reliable, quality product that can compete in a competitive environment for internet voting systems. And Markham must exercise due diligence in systematically selecting a vendor, whose systems the Town can trust even if it may not be able to openly verify it. From our past work with Markham, it is evident to us that the Town did a thorough analysis and tendering process for the selection of the vendor as well as the design of the internet voting procedures and protocols for the 2003 and 2006 elections. It is beyond the purview of this report to redress the overall vendor selection process.
Agenda Item # 10.
Internet Voting: Accessibility and Participation Opportunities

Threats on voter authenticity, system accountability, system availability, and system disclosability highlight the preoccupation with the technical aspects of internet voting systems: opponents point to the inherent security flaws in internet use, and proponents tout the security features of internet voting systems. Yet, some of the most challenging issues are those that are more social. A final key issue falls under an umbrella term of voter rights. These rights include privacy as well as the right to vote without coercion. There are also limits on what the voter can do, namely the prohibition on vote selling, bidding, and switching. What is challenging about this issue is that unlike, say, voter authenticity, solutions cannot be readily technically engineered (e.g. hacker checking) nor addressed
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through procedures within Markhams control (e.g. the two-step process for internet voting). This is the other side of convenience; what happens when voting occurs behind closed doors at the home.
Agenda Item # 10.
In terms of privacy, there lies an inherent conundrum. Ideally, it would be possible to audit and verify that the online vote was cast, collected, recorded, and stored accurately, and reflected the intent of the voter, without accessing information that could identify the voter. To use another example, note what is required to reverse an inadvertent financial transaction. A paper or otherwise auditable trail must be followed until the identity of the parties in the transaction as well as the details of the transaction can be verified. Auditing in this example is much easier because it is not constrained by the requirement to protect privacy, which is a fundamental voter right. Some have proposed involving a fourth party, separate from the Town, the vendors system, and the voter [Jones 2004]. This fourth party would be responsible for independently addressing internet voting measures to ensure voter authenticity, system accountability, system availability, and system disclosability. This party would also audit results for anomalies. Most of this would be redundant, but done at arms length from other parties with a fresh set of eyes. However this is overly cumbersome, and would be quite expensive. Perhaps for other larger scope elections, this form of redundancy may be considered, but for Markham, this represents overkill and is not warranted. Moreover, this party may help identify, for example, instances of vote selling post hoc, but it would not resolve the audit/privacy conundrum. There are procedures that take the notion of an independent partys fresh set of eyes to strengthen auditing without endangering privacy by giving additional responsibility to the voter. [Jones 2004] lists such procedures, which Markham may consider: x The voter is given the option to print the screen, which shows their voting choice. The printout serves as verification for the voter, and represents a subtle means to make the vote more concrete. It may be possible to even solicit these ballots using a statistical sampling plan if an after-election audit is called. Obviously, the procedure for doing this must be weighed and carefully documented. On the other side, some argue that the voter should never hold a tangible record of their completed ballot [Enguehard 2008]. Markham can employ parallel testing. That is, under another random sampling plan, fictitious votes may be entered into the system. These can be audited from beginning to end. It is recognized that such testing should be done before the system is live, but doing this during the voting period may add additional audit credibility. If this is done, it is crucial that there are documented and tested means to ensure that these votes are never treated as legitimate ones.
Social engineering is a term from Information Systems security parlance. Wikipedia defines it as the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information, rather than by breaking in or using technical hacking techniques (essentially a fancier, more technical way of lying). An infamous hacker, Kevin Mitnick, stated it was much easier to trick someone into giving a password than hacking into a system. Vote selling, bidding, and switching are forms of social engineering, and as such it is easier for the perpetrator to do, and difficult to catch and design for. However as much as these acts
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may be do-able in a small scale, these acts are difficult to do in large scale; for example, a mass email soliciting votes would raise suspicion. So large scale damage of these acts is quite limited, and the risk of perpetrating these acts for internet voting is arguably no different than for traditional voting. Moreover, threats perpetrated in small-scale tend also to be geographically localizede.g. buying votes from ones neighbours and friends. As such, the threat of getting caught, punished, and ostracized by the local community is more compelling than for a hacker somewhere far away. So laws should act as deterrents against these acts.
Agenda Item # 10.
Coercion also falls in the same category, with the additional caveat that some acts that are technically coercion by law are viewed by coercing and coerced parties as not inappropriate, never mind criminal. In any municipality in the GTA, there are numerous voters who have difficulty reading English. These voters expect language assistance from their family or friends. It is a fine line between assistance and coercion in these cases. It is not uncommon for voters to expect to be able to take their helper into the voting booth. At the voting place, election officials can deal with such situations. Yet, in the home, there is no such scrutiny. In such relatively innocuous cases, alerting the voter of what their responsibilities are should suffice. More insidious forms of coercion like intimidation and bloc voting, like other acts that corrupt voter rights, are small scale and geographically localized, and hence are limited scope threats. x Either in the paper material that is sent to potential internet voters or even on the website in which they vote, voters should be made aware of the criminal implications of acts like coercion, intimidation, vote selling, bidding, and switching that corrupt their voting rights. For the special case where apparent coercion may result due to language difficulties, Markham should consider putting in notes about what is and is not coercion in different languages. Again this could be in paper material or on the website.
Encompassing a social perspective to internet voting allows us to expand beyond technical impediments and discuss possibilities. Recall that internet voting is a form of convenience voting that happens to use the internet. And people definitely like the convenience: not only was the percentage of convenience voting in the US federal elections 37% in 2008, it steadily increased from estimates of 14% in 2000 [Gronke 2004], and 20% in 2004 [Gronke & Toffey 2007]. What follows is a discussion of effects when people are free to vote irrespective of time and geography [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]. These effects must be compelling enough to make the assumption of internet voting risks worthwhile. These results generally refer to the broad category of convenience votingwhich encompasses mail-in and advanced voting as well as internet voting. Though the questionnaire results from 2003 and 2006 elections are very helpful, there is not nearly enough data for broader inference from the Markham and other internet voting experiences. Much more can be inferred about convenience voting. In proceeding further, it is assumed that reasonable inferences about internet voting can made from reviews of the data on convenience voting. Will the Towns use of internet voting indeed raise participation, and will it change the composition of voters? Will some constituents be more inclined to vote because the internet option is available? Will
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there be some constituents whose participation will be unaffected [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]? Not surprisingly, the public response has led many politicians to claim that convenience voting increases turnout. Political science research is substantially more skeptical. Voters decide whether to vote before they decide how to vote. Having said that, there is something very pertinent to Markham, which jibes with the results of the postelection questionnaire results [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]: Some suggestive evidence, but not many empirical results, shows that voters use convenience voting procedures differently across election contextsin particular, that the impact of convenience reforms is greater in lower-intensity contests. In general, the research concludes that convenience voting has a small but statistically significant impact on turnout, with most estimates of the increase in the 2%4% range. In Markham, where elections are more often than not lower-intensity contests, internet voting may very well contribute to reaching the moderately enthused voters. But what (or more specifically who) is on the minds of the convenience voters [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]? [D]emographic differences raise an important question for politicians who have to vote on legislation mandating new convenience voting methods: Do they help or hurt my political party and my own chances at reelection? Political science research has examined the partisan consequences of convenience voting reforms and found that political leaders have little to be concerned about. These studies all suggest the same pattern: Voters who use convenience voting are more politically aware, more partisan, and more ideologically extreme. Convenience voting does not appear to provide an advantage towards any political inclination. It may however reward the better-organized [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008]. Convenience voting reforms disrupt the timing and flow of elections. Campaigns must adjust to new laws and create strategies that maximize the new opportunities that early voting creates. At the most basic level, allowing voters to cast ballots before Election Day extends the final push of mobilization back several weeks, raising the costs of campaigns get out the vote efforts. [Gronke 2004] On the other hand, it is possible that convenience voting may actually result in more efficient campaigning. Convenience voting provides campaigns with the opportunity to direct their resources and efforts in a more strategic manner. Many states with significant numbers of absentee ballots publish which voters have turned in their ballots prior to Election Day, creating a real-time public record of who has and who has not voted. This could enable
Agenda Item # 10.
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campaigns to mobilize core supporters early by calling those who have not already voted and then turning their efforts to undecided swing voters.
Agenda Item # 10.
In fact in the recent Halifax elections, candidates were able to track who had already voted online, which had led to a decrease in crowding by candidates representatives at the physical voting places [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]. On one hand, circumspection is required in discussing the main touted benefits of convenience voting: increased voter participation and cost reduction. In summary, convenience voting lowers the cost of turnout, but unequally across different groups in the population. Contrary to expectations that convenience voting reforms would dramatically increase turnout, most estimates are that these reforms have, at best, a marginal, though statistically significant, impact on voter participation. [Traugott 2003] No academic studies that we are aware of have taken up the question of the costs of elections with convenience voting. The costs of elections has been referred to as the holy grail of election administration research because so little is known about the subject. [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008] On the other hand, a recent report for Elections Canada analyzes the three highest profile internet voting elections in CanadaMarkham, Peterborough, and Halifaxand states data that show increased voter turnout. Moreover, internet voters were very satisfied with their voting experience and significantly in favour of voting online again [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]. While turnout overall remained unchanged in the 2003 [Markham] election (28 percent), turnout in the advance polls increased by 300 percent In 2006, advance voting on-line increased by 48 percent a portion of previous non-voters (25 percent in 2003 and 21 percent in 2006) declared that they had decided to cast a ballot because of the convenience of Internet voting. One hundred percent of the voters who voted on-line in 2003 reported they would vote on-line again in the future and 91 percent in the 2006 survey indicated they would be very likely to do so [CANARIE 2004; Delvinia Interactive 2007]. In all, 14 percent of electors [for Peterborough] who voted cast their ballots over the Internet (3,473 of 25,036). The largest group of on-line voters was baby boomers. Specifically, 70 percent of on-line voters were 45 and older, and the highest rate of use was among electors aged 55 to 64. Only 14 percent of those aged 18 to 34 voted on-line [City of Peterborough 2009]. Though voter turnout [in Halifax] did not increase overall (from 2004 to 2008 it dropped from 48 percent or 125,035 voters to 38 percent or 100,708 voters) turnout on advance voting days (where remote Internet and telephone voting were offered as options) increased by more than 50 percent (from 14,000 electors in 2004 to 29,000 electors in 2008) despite it only being offered for a three-day period... Municipal officials were sufficiently pleased with the 2008 pilot project that they recently conducted another remote Internet and telephone
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voting trial as part of a special by-election that took place on September 19, 2009. This time, however, the option to vote using the Internet or telephone from remote locations was continuous (from the first voting day up until and including election day). This is the first instance in Canada where remote Internet voting was an option throughout the entire voting period. Voter turnout was 35 percent, a 12 to 25 percent increase from turnout in the three previous by-elections (21, 10 and 23 percent respectively) and 75 percent of all votes cast were electronic.
Agenda Item # 10.
The Halifax case is particularly compelling because results there likely will lead to cost savings in the future for the overall election, one of the holy grails of internet voting [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009]. Overall, HRM [Halifax Regional Muncipality] personnel are sufficiently pleased with the trials that they plan to eliminate a substantial number of polling stations in the 2012 municipal election. Council anticipates this will result in increased turnout, lower election costs, and happier electors. If these considerations are accurate, the Halifax model may be an important methodology to consider in the development of an electronic voting program in other Canadian jurisdictions. It is important to triangulate these data about voter satisfaction with other data from more researchoriented studies. In a carefully designed academic study that used various data collection methods like pre- and postelection questionnaires as well as focus groups, interviews and log file analysis, 14 field experiments were conducted over various European locations that were in the middle of actual elections for municipalities or professional organizations [Oostveen & Van den Besselaar 2009]. Salient findings from the study corroborate other academic studies as well as the results from Canadian elections. Different demographics found the internet voting instances to be a relatively user-friendly experience, with many finding the experience surprisingly easy and brief. Moreover, Markhams elections have historically not been what would be called overly complicated. Noteworthy however, was that in over of the cases people forgot their passwords. x If not already in their standard procedures, Markham should conduct some usability tests. This is especially important if the user interfaces provided by the vendor differ substantially from those of the 2003 and 2006 elections, and if additional information (different from 2003 and 2006) needs to be presented to the voters. In particular, ways to make the task of voting easier and more seamless once the potential internet voter has received their password should be explored. In addition, usability testing should also be extended to examine all paper documentation that voters receivee.g. is it easy to find the directions, or how should alternate language instructions be presented.
These experiments also corroborate academic studies and Canadian municipal elections results about general voter participation [Oostveen & Van den Besselaar 2009]. The medium apparently does not attract those citizens who are not already politically engaged. This could indicate that the appeal of a new voting system is in general not very
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high and that turnout is not based on the voting method, or that there are other more organisational issues that play a part. In Orsay, the high number of registered voters may be explained because the City Hall organised the voting session, and all residents received an official letter of invitation.
Agenda Item # 10.
[Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009] note the intense marketing campaign for internet voting in Markham. And [Oostveen & Van den Besselaar 2009] point out that internet voting participation is higher when the quality of the voter registration information is better. That is, internet voting alone cannot ensure improved overall voter participation; it in combination with organizational efforts like marketing campaigns and registration drives may. Finally, many studies have shown that internet voting does have a bias towards younger, technically savvy (or at least comfortable with computer use), more affluent voters [Caporusso, Buzzi, Fele, Peri, Sartori, & di Sociologia 2006; Reniu 2005]. As long as elections provide both convenience and Voting Day voting options, any bias against older, less computer literate is mitigated by this groups usual propensity to be engaged in elections. Moreover, the experience from Peterboroughwhich has a large older population and usability studies imply that as long as internet voting is not too complex the older group is willing to vote online. Municipal elections generally do not require complicated ballots and so a complex user interface need not be employed. Also, internet voting obviates the potentially complicated task of installing voting software, instead requiring the user of a Web browser that even those who would selfidentify as computer illiterate generally know how to use. Finally, one subtle issue that is presented as a downside to internet voting is that it can perturb the civicminded, water cooler culture that forms around voting places on Voting Day. [S]cholars ask whether the decline of the precinct place will change the position of elections and of Election Day in the way that democracies operate. [Gronke, Galanes-Rosenbaum, Miller, & Toffey 2008] Finally, perhaps the most significant social concern is the threat of disintegration of social capital or civic life. The proliferation of electronic election services has the power, some say, to alter the nature of electoral participation by causing more electors to vote alone instead of at a polling place with others. This threatens to erode civic life, local social networks and groups related to elections. [Goodman, Pammett, & DeBardeleben 2009] However, the other side can also be argued: that internet voting can be the basis for a virtual, more persistent water cooler culture. As the Halifax example demonstrates, internet voting can serve as a driver for re-thinking and improving campaigning and canvassing strategies. There are other complementary innovations that use IT and the internet to enrich the relationship between candidates and prospective voters. For example, through the Smartvote Website, Swiss municipal politicians fill out questionnaires that collect their positions on issues weeks prior to an election. Potential voters can then match their views on issues with those of the politicians, and even analyze and visualize politicians positions [Thurman & Gasser 2009]. Also, the politicians are able to post their positions and other news and update their postings.
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In traditional voting, there are few contact points between candidates and their constituents. Certainly the vote itself is one; a conversation while canvassing is another. A website like this mediates, enriches, and keeps persistent a personalizable (as opposed to a generic sign on the neighbours lawn) dialogue between the candidates and their constituents. Businesses right now are exploring strategies to maintain dialogue with their customers and they are finding that social mediablogs, Wikis, Facebook, LinkedIn, and social bookmarking sitesprovide them this opportunity. Blogs and social media groups are now heavily put to use by politicians in US, Canada and elsewhere. Markhams internet voting experiences represent a platform from which information technology mediated conversations with constituents can be developed and fostered. Ultimately, its symbolism as a platform for more personal and enriching interactions with government represents a subtle but potentially powerful additional rationale for internet voting in Markham. [I]n a dynamic social and technological environment inaction can have negative consequences. If cultures of shopping, banking, playing games and socialising are increasingly moving online, the failure of the political sphere to move in tandem risks confining it to eccentric marginality. This might be the strongest argument for voting online: the symbolic message is delivered that democracy is consistent with contemporary culture. The risk of such symbolism for the political elite and a democratic opportunity for citizens is that online voting will stimulate a public appetite for a more interactive system of representation before and after elections. [Coleman 2005]
Agenda Item # 10.
References
Alvarez, R. M., S. Ansolabehere, A. Berinsky, G. Lenz, C. Stewart III, & T. E. Hall. (2009). 2008 Survey of the Performance of American Elections. Boston/Pasadena: Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. Ballas, A. (2006). E-Voting: The Security Perspective. London: England: London School of Economics. CANARIE. (2004, February 2). "Canadas First Study on Internet Voting Proves Voters Want e-Democracy". News Release. Caporusso, L., C. Buzzi, G. Fele, P. Peri, F. Sartori, & F. di Sociologia. (2006). "Transition to electronic voting and citizen participation". In R. Krimmer (Ed.), Electronic Voting (pp. 191-200): LNI Proceedings. City of Peterborough. (2009, August 21). "City of Peterborough, Internet Information Guide 2006, 2006 e.lection: Go On-line to Be First in Line". 2009 Coleman, S. (2005). "Just How Risky is Online Voting?" Information Polity, 10(1-2), 95-104. Delvinia Interactive. (2007). Understanding the Digital Voter Experience: The Delvinia Report on Internet Voting in the 2006 Town of Markham Municipal Election. Enguehard, C. (2008). "Transparency in Electronic Voting: the Great Challenge". Paper presented at the IPSA International Political Science Association RC 10 on Electronic Democracy, Stellenbosch, South Africa. Enguehard, C., & R. Lehn. (2009, July 13). "Vulnerability analysis of three remote voting methods". Paper presented at the XXI IPSA World Congress of Political Science, Santiago, Chile. Goodman, N., J. H. Pammett, & J. DeBardeleben. (2009). A Comparative Assessment of Electronic Voting. Ottawa: Canada: Strategic Knowledge Cluster: Canada-Europe Transatlantic Dialogue.
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Gronke, P. (2004, September 2-5). "Early voting reforms and American elections". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago: IL. Gronke, P., E. Galanes-Rosenbaum, P. A. Miller, & D. Toffey. (2008). "Convenience Voting". Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 437-455. Gronke, P., & D. Toffey. (2007, September 2-5). "The psychological and institutional determinants of early voting". Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago: IL. Hole, K., & L.-H. Netland. (2010). "Toward Risk Assessment of Large-Impact and Rare Events". IEEE SECURITY & PRIVACY, 8. Jefferson, D., A. D. Rubin, B. Simons, & D. Wagner. (2004). "Analyzing Internet Voting Security". COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM, 47, 10-59. Jones, D. W. (2004). "Auditing elections". Communications of the ACM, 47(10), 46-50. Mohen, J., & J. Glidden. (2001). "The case for internet voting". Communications of the ACM, 44(1), 72. Oostveen, A. M., & P. Van den Besselaar. (2009). "Users' experiences with e-voting: a comparative case study". International Journal of Electronic Governance, 2(4), 357-377. Pieters, W. (2006). "Acceptance of voting technology: between confidence and trust". Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 3986, 283. Reniu, J. M. (2005). Improving Citizen Participation Through the Use of Electronic Voting. Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Sawada, M., D. Cossette, B. Wellar, & T. Kurt. (2006). "Analysis of the urban/rural broadband divide in Canada: Using GIS in planning terrestrial wireless deployment". Government Information Quarterly, 23(3-4), 454479. Statistics Canada. (2009). "2006 Census: Community Profiles - Markham". Retrieved March 22, 2010, from http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92591/details/Page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=3519036&Geo2=PR&Code2=35&Data=Count&Sear chText=markham&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom= Thurman, J., & U. Gasser. (2009). Three Case Studies from Switzerland. Cambridge, MA: Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. Town of Markham. (2009). "Community Sustainability - Markham's Draft Sustainability Goals - Social+Cultural Well-being". Retrieved March 22, 2009, from http://www.markham.ca/Markham/aspc/sustainability/goals/socialequity.asp Town of Markham Economic Development Department. (2009). Economic Profile. Markham, ON. Traugott, M. W. (2003). "Why Electoral Reform Has Failed: If you build it, will they come?" In A. Crigler, M. Just & E. McCaffery (Eds.), Rethinking the Vote: The Politics and Prospects of American Election Reform (pp. 167184). New York: Oxford University Press.
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... Municipal Election 2000 Cambridge Wards Ward Number 1 2 3 4 5 6

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Percentage Turnout 29.9 31.6 22.5 Acclamation Acclamation 27.6

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