TO VOTE…CLICK HERE - December 17, 2009
CANADIANS WANT INTERNET VOTING IN FEDERAL ELECTIONS
[Ottawa – December 17, 2009] – Canadians strongly favour the introduction of voting over the internet according to a major poll of Canadians conducted by EKOS Research Associates for the CBC.
Nearly half of Canadians say they would “very likely” vote online if that option were available to them. Another 15% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.
Not surprisingly, young people, who have had lower rates of voting than their elders in recent years, are the most enthusiastic about internet voting.
“Canada’s already anaemic voter turnout hit a historic low in 2008,” said EKOS President Frank Graves. “This lack of participation was particularly pronounced among Canadians under the age of 45. This was in sharp contrast to the significant spike up in voting rates amongst young Americans in the last Presidential election, driven in part by Barack Obama’s candidacy.”
“The clear message in this survey is that Canadians want a secure internet channel to vote online, and that this could increase participation rates most dramatically among young people, where the problem of low turnout is now most severe.”
Interestingly, the percentage of Canadians who want to vote online does not vary much among the supporters of different parties, so there is no obvious reason for any of the parties to resist such a change.
“Canadians increasingly pay their bills, file their taxes, order their entertainment, shop and bank online,” said Graves. “Even on a conservative estimate, we could well double the rate of voting among younger voters in the next election by adopting online voting.”
EKOS also asked respondents to choose between the most obvious remedies for low voter turnout: mandatory voting and public education. We also included internet voting and proportional representation as options.
The clear winner among these possible reforms was online voting. This choice was the overwhelming favourite of younger voters and, in particular, the no-longer-quite-so-young Generation X. In second place was the idea of proportional representation where parties would receive MPs in proportion to their share of popular vote.
These proposals were in turn more attractive to Canadians than either mandatory voting or increased public education.
“Of course, it would be possible to adopt more than one of these proposals in concert to address low voter turnout,” said Graves. “But clearly many Canadians see internet voting as a simple practical step to getting more Canadians involved, as well as a convenience for voting themselves.”
Click here for the full report: full_report_december_17
December 30th, 2009 at 5:41 pm
You bet there should be a better voting system than the one we have now - which is dependent on weather, receiving a voting card, infirmaties and age-related restrictions. But I’m not sure that ‘internet voting’ is the best answer. With all the hackings and untraceable accounts on the Internet, what’s to prevent subversion of voting procedures to alter true numbers.
I would prefer to see voting kiosks - wherever there are currently lotto kiosks - set up with voting machines that can cater to voters over a period of time - say a week - to cast their vote via electronic voting machines.
Many elderly voters do not use computers or the internet, but most of them still shop for food and could make their way to their local lotto kiosk. Now we just have to figure out what security number or identifier is a ‘one per voter’ number. Forget the Social Insurance Number - we have citizens and non-citizens with multiples of those.
January 14th, 2010 at 6:36 pm
Against. Idea is a nonsense.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Another solution would be to return to Canada’s former election preparedness by sending out enumeration teams to every household in the country. This personalized the election in a non-partisan way and gave everyone advance notice that voting day was coming up.
I think it highly likely that voter turnout was much higher when enumeration was part of election planning. What do you bet we’ve adopted a US system that’s not nearly as appropriate to Canada’s much smaller population as the voter enumeration system?
February 18th, 2010 at 7:04 am
I think the paper ballot is the best. Internet can be hacked, whoever you are. The paper ballot is hard, concrete, evidential copy of what is real. Look at the goings on elsewhere with electronic vote manipulation.
It ain’t broke so why fix it? The issue is not access to vote the issue is people have no time to digest politics at all. They have too much else going on in their lives.
All the internet vote would do would be to make news for those who lose and make cheating more a realistic option for those of that ilk.