Online voting issues lengthen deadlines, raise questions about process

TORONTO – A candidate for an Ontario municipality forced by big online voting problems to wait another day to find out if he will be mayor, said Tuesday that the process was disconcerting.

In addition, Chris Peabody called on the provincial government to study Internet voting and to ensure that election laws are updated to reflect the new reality.

"This really gets you to ask if it's worth all your time and effort," said Peabody of his May mayoral race in Brockton, Ontario. "This is perhaps one of the reasons that there is so much cynicism and cheers in municipal politics this year in Ontario."

Instead of celebrating a victory or drowning a defeat in a drink, Peabody and many other political hopefuls found themselves facing an online voting problem in Monday's municipal elections. In total, 51 municipalities using Dominion voting systems based in Denver, Colorado, had problems. Some chose to extend voting hours until late Monday, but others, like Brockton, in west central Ontario, have postponed the deadline to 24 hours.

In a statement released Monday, Dominion blamed an unidentified Toronto company for limiting incoming voting traffic. Dominion said the problem was solved in 90 minutes, but many voters were still complaining about problems. In a brief response Tuesday, the company announced it would issue a statement later in the day.

"Our priority is to ensure that our municipal election clients in Ontario can provide their constituents with uninterrupted service until the end of the vote," said Dominion Vice President Kay Stimson.

Dominion, which claims to be one of the leading providers of election-counting solutions, billed Brockton about $ 5 for each of the municipality's 7,500 eligible voters, or about $ 40,000. In theory, the vote would cost about 15% less than a traditional ballot, which requires staff and other costs. This year, the Dominion problem may have increased costs, which Peabody said the company should cover.

The company was also responsible for the vote in the Progressive Conservative leadership race, in which Doug Ford, who later became Ontario's premier, emerged victorious. However, this contest was marked by voting problems and it took more than five hours more than it would take to declare the winner.

In the 2010 elections, Brockton encountered similar bandwidth problems with another company providing online voting services, Intelivote Systems, in Halifax. The municipality obtained a free online referendum in 2013. However, in 2010 and again in 2014, paper ballots were also available for those who chose this route. This is not the case on Monday, as the council voted shortly to completely eliminate the paper.

The delays have caused some people to completely abandon the vote, said Peabody.

"Some people have phoned me and said," I really want to vote for you but I've been here for an hour and a half and now I'm done, "Peabody said. said he was working on the phone in order to get the vote on Tuesday.

Peabody said that he had always had doubts about online voting in light of computer hacking concerns and technical issues. The law on municipal elections needs to be updated, he said. One example concerns the ban on candidates helping people to vote in polling stations. However, a polling station is "the gateway to someone who has an iPhone," noted Peabody.

"The province should consider regulating it," he said. "They need to study cybersecurity and bandwidth issues, foreign ownership issues."

In total, at least a dozen municipalities extended the vote in their local elections for one day. These municipalities included Pembroke, Waterloo, Greater Sudbury and several communities in the Muskoka area.

The rest of Ontario's 417 municipal races went without technical problems.