Canadian Municipalities Stick With Online Voting Despite Concerns
News Analysis
Many Canadian municipalities continue to favour online voting and computerized vote counting despite controversies around these technologies and expert warnings about cybersecurity risks and other issues.
Twelve Canadian municipalities used some form of online voting in 2003, 44 in 2010, 97 in 2014, and 194 in 2018, according to a CBC report. In the municipal elections in Ontario in 2018, 99 municipalities used Intelivote Systems and appeared to have no glitches, CBC reported at the time. However, another 51 municipalities, all of which used Dominion Voting Systems, experienced problems and had to extend voting hours, with some communities having to extend the voting period by a full 24 hours, CBC said. Dominion blamed the problem on bandwidth limits placed by a third-party provider, CBC reported.