Abstract
In the past decade, Internet voting has been used in hundreds of binding elections at multiple levels of government throughout the world. Though many European jurisdictions have established well-developed online voting models, Canada is quickly emerging as an important research case. To date, there have been more instances of remote Internet voting in local Canadian elections than any other country. There have been more than two million remote Internet voting opportunities in over 90 local Canadian elections. This chapter analyzes the effects of online ballots by examining the City of Markham, Ontario as a case study. Using survey data from the 2003, 2006, and 2010 Markham municipal elections, a 2010 survey of candidates and other municipal data were applicable, the chapter considers which electors are using Internet voting, its potential to positively impact voting turnout, whether it is encouraging the participation of reported nonvoters, and assesses the implications for candidates and campaigns.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
For purposes of stylistic relief ‘remote Internet voting’ is used synonymously throughout this article with ‘Internet voting’, ‘online voting’, ‘Internet ballots’, and ‘online ballots’.
- 2.
For additional information about specific samples or methods used in conducting the surveys please see the Appendix.
- 3.
These include Champlain, Clarence-Rockland, East Hawkesbury, Hawkesbury, Markham, North Dundas, North Glengarry North Stormont, South Dundas, South Glengarry, South Stormont, and the Nation (Goodman 2010).
- 4.
E-voting here refers to casting a ballot remotely by Internet or telephone. Both Internet voting and telephone voting were offered as alternative voting methods by 14 Nova Scotia municipalities in their October 2012 local elections.
- 5.
Though passed by city council, Vancouver was required to pass a by-law and have its online voting plan approved by the province given that it was incorporated before the British Columbia and is therefore governed under the Vancouver Charter and not the provincial municipal elections legislation (Kohoko 2011). With an electorate of 410,000 Vancouver would have been the largest Canadian municipality to offer online ballots in a binding election to date (Pearce 2011).
- 6.
The term ‘network voting’ will allow Elections Ontario to conduct a trial including any one of the following voting methods—telephone, fax, Internet, and possibly SMS (text message) or a multi-platform trial including a combination of electronic methods. Decisions regarding whether a trial will take place, and if so its scope, are to be determined in the coming weeks (Pollock 2011).
- 7.
These changes were made in 2000.
- 8.
The Liberal winner was also declared the new provincial premier.
- 9.
This process differs slightly from the one used in 2003 and 2006, whereby electors were required to create a unique security question and did not have to submit their birth date. This was a new security measure for 2010 (Turpin 2011b).
- 10.
This increase in reported satisfaction may have something to do with the changes Markham made to the voting process (Delvinia 2011).
- 11.
Reasons for the decrease could be many, notably a different online voting marketing approach.
- 12.
The data was grouped into these age categories because that is how it was made available.
- 13.
An exact breakdown of online participation by the same age categories would confirm this.
- 14.
If online voting were made available throughout the entire voting period including election day, its impact on overall turnout would be more easily evaluated.
- 15.
Please note that this is not a comprehensive list of all municipalities and townships that offered remote Internet voting in the 2010 Ontario local elections. The data shown was collected by Intelivote Systems Inc., the remote Internet and telephone service provider for a number of municipalities, and supplied by Dean Smith, CEO/President.
- 16.
This includes nonvoters and those who say that they vote ‘occasionally’.
- 17.
- 18.
Values in the scale ranged from 3.00 to 9.00. Since 1.00 had been used to represent the response “vote in all elections’ a score of 3.00 represented a frequent voter. 2.00 represented voting ‘in some elections’ or ‘from time to time” so values of 4.00, 5.00, and 6.00 were grouped together to symbolize the occasional voter. Finally, ‘never’ voting received a score of 3.00 so values of 7.00, 8.00, and 9.00 were clustered together to signify an infrequent or nonvoter.
- 19.
This data comes from a different survey, which includes an oversample of youth aged 18–26 from across Canada collected by Delvinia.
- 20.
This survey was carried out by and is the property of Delvinia.
References
Alvarez RM, Hall TE (2004) Point, click and vote: the future of internet voting. Brookings Institution Press, Washington
Alvarez RM, Hall TE, Trechsel AH (2009) Internet voting in comparative perspective: the case of Estonia. PS: Polit Sci Polit 42:497–505
Bochsler D (2010) Can internet voting increase political participation? Remote electronic voting and turnout in the Estonian 2007 parliamentary elections. In: Prepared for presentation at the conference ‘Internet and Voting’, Fiesole, June 3–4
Breuer F, Trechsel AH (2006) Report for the council of Europe, E-voting in the 2005 local elections in Estonia. European University Institute, Florence
Delvinia (2003) Internet Voting and Canadian Democracy in Practice: The Delvinia Report on Internet Voting in the 2003 City of Markham Municipal Election
Delvinia (2007) Understanding the Digital Voter Experience: The Delvinia Report on Internet Voting in the 2006 City of Markham Municipal Election
Delvinia (2011) eDemocracy and citizen engagement: The Delvinia Report on Internet Voting in City of Markham.
Elections Canada (2011) Canada Municipal Jurisdiction Graphs
Froman A (2010) CEO, Delvinia. Personal interview, 21 Oct 2010
Goodman N (2010) Internet voting in Canadian municipalities: what can we learn? CEU Polit Sci J 5(4):492–520
Goodman N, Pammett JH, DeBardeleben J (2010) A comparative assessment of electronic voting, report prepared for elections Canada
Hewitt L (2011) Clerks Technology Analyst, City of Burlington. Personal Communication, 6 May 2011
Kohoko D (2011) Manager, Alternative Voting Methods, Elections Canada. Personal communication, 14 April 2011
Mercurio B (2004) Democracy in decline: can internet voting save the electoral process? John Marshall J Comput Inf Law 12(2):101–143
Milner H (2010) The internet generation: engaged citizens or political dropouts. Tufts University Press, Medford
Norris P (2001) Digital divide: civic engagement, information poverty, and the internet. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Pammett JH, LeDuc L (2003) Explaining the turnout decline in Canadian federal elections: a new survey of non-voters. Ottawa, Elections Canada. http://www.elections.ca
Pearce B (2011) Deputy Chief Election Officer, City of Vancouver. Personal Interview, 5 May 2011
Pollock S (2011) Program Manager, Event Readiness, Elections Ontario. Personal Interview, 10 May 2011
Smith D (2012) President, Intelivote. Personal Communication, 30 Nov 2012
Trechsel AH (2007) E-voting and electoral participation. In: de Vreese C (ed) Dynamics of referendum campaigns—an international perspective. Palgrave, London, pp 159–182
Trechsel A, Robert S, Kristjan V (2010) Internet voting in Estonia: a comparative analysis of four elections since 2005, report prepared for the directorate general of democracy and political affairs and the directorate of democratic institutions, Council of Europe
Turpin C (2011a) Legislative Coordinator, City of Markham. Personal Communication, 12 April 2011
Turpin C (2011b) Legislative Coordinator, City of Markham. Personal Interview, 25 April 2011
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Jon Pammett and Bernard Grofman for their valuable comments. The research and data for this chapter was in large part provided by Delvinia, a Toronto-based digital strategy and customer experience design firm that has been played an important role in helping Markham develop its Internet voting approach and outreach strategy. I sincerely thank Adam Froman, CEO, for the use of the data his company collected over the past three election cycles in Markham. For more information about Delvinia’s research and data collection regarding Internet voting please contact Susan O’Neill, Public Relations Manager, via email at soneill@delvinia.com. I would also like to thank Elections Canada for kindly sharing their research and Dean Smith, President of Intelivote Systems Inc. for offering some municipal data his company has collected in past elections.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Goodman, N.J. (2014). Internet Voting in a Local Election in Canada. In: Grofman, B., Trechsel, A., Franklin, M. (eds) The Internet and Democracy in Global Perspective. Studies in Public Choice, vol 31. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04352-4_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04352-4_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-04351-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-04352-4
eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and LawPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)