New Democrats become first party in Canada to experiment with online voting

An American-based firm that specializes in using the Internet for balloting is bringing its expertise to Canada for the first time as it helps a federal political party choose its new leader. The New Democratic Party has hired election.com of Garden City NY so that party members may use online voting in the campaign to replace retiring leader Alexa McDonough. The three-year-old company has conducted elections for public- and private-sector groups around the globe. While it has ventured into Canada to run votes for international organizations with Canadian membership, this will be its first exclusive deal in this country.Amy Parker, VP communications for election.com, tells Network Letter the firm just completed a massive e-voting pilot in Britain. Voters for local governments in Liverpool and Sheffield were given new options in the election. In addition to standard paper ballots, citizens had the ability to vote through the Internet, public access kiosks, and wireless short message service. Not only did voter turnout increase in both cities, in Liverpool more than 40 per cent of the votes cast were done so electronically. "It really proves that people like this new technology and like the convenience and access to the ballot that it allows," Parker says.The NDP was reluctant to go along with the idea initially. A 19-member committee on leadership selection considered the notion and rejected it. "We have seen other parties try to add technical innovations like telephone balloting only to have the system crash on them," the committee’s first report said. "For this reason, the committee did not believe that we should operate an Internet or tele-phone voting system on the day of the convention." The NDP’s federal secretary attributes that feeling to fear of the unknown. More information changed members’ minds, Chris Watson believes. "I think that was mainly because it was something that nobody on that committee knew much about or had any experience with," he says. "It was just sort of this unknown lurking out there. I think in some folks’ minds it was like saying ‘why don’t we vote by voodoo or something’." Alisa Backert, election.com’s director of software development, explains that the system relies less on sorcery than on modern technological safeguards. "We have three levels of firewalls. We have sophisticated latest-and-greatest stuff," she reports. "We take advantage of the fact that the hosting facility has their own IDS equipment that they monitor obviously 24/7. But in addition to that, we have our own intrusion detection equipment that is set up with a set of business rules that are specific to the type of traffic that we have on our site." Backert notes that the election.com hosting site, which is located in Manhattan, was one of the few that remained in operation during the September 11 attacks. Watson concedes that not everyone may have access to the Internet. While the NDP has no formal policy to accommodate the digital divide, some individual solutions are emerging.Vancouver MP Libby Davies is hoping to set up a location in her riding where party members can watch the convention and then vote online. "I don’t think as a federal party we’ve got the resources ourselves to actually go into communities across the country and actually physically set that up," Watson says. "But I’m optimistic that in a number of communities that will happen." The party will also remind members that they may have Internet access through work, community centres or libraries, or through friends’ homes. The final details of the system are still being worked out between the party and election.com.

New Democrats become first party in Canada to experiment with online voting

News | 07/15/2002 4:00 am EDT

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