Net brings new wave of voters

This is the second of two parts on how the Internet is changing the way we live. Last week Spectator writer Mark McNeil looked at how government is expanding its services through the Net. Today he reports on democracy in cyberspace.

Voting on the Internet via a computer has already proven to be successful. It has, however, raised serious concerns among many groups.

An election is taking place today at McMaster University. But you won't find any ballot boxes.

Students are actually using the Internet to vote for their graduate school representative on the university's board of governors.

And while it is the first time the university has shunned the paper ballot in a campus election, it is part of growing trend in North America.

From community groups to the American presidential primaries, elections, and referendums are starting to go digital.

And there is a hot debate developing about whether this is a good thing. Some say it is unfair to people who don't have easy access to Internet. Whereas others contend the development is beneficial because it could usher in a new wave of enthusiasm for democracy.

"The word democracy goes back to the ancient Greeks when everyone had a vote", says Peter Strum, a partner of Deloitte Consulting in Ottawa. He is a consultant to government departments that want to expand their electronic services.

"They used to sit around one of those amphitheatres and vote. We sort of got away from that when we gave it to representatives who went away and represented us. Ironically, the technology may allow us to go right back to everybody being able to vote like a referendum on every issue."

However, McMaster University computer science professor David Jones says such a development would concern him.

"I think this would be a potentially serious error to dive into cyber-democracy. I think there are many benefits we have with the sober reflection that you get when you have representative democracy."

"Issues run hot and cold and there can be a public frenzy ... And besides it would be so burdensome. You have other things to spend your time on, rather than worrying about voting on trivial matters, like who cleans the streets."

Yet Scott Flood, president of Iballot.com, a New Hampshire-based company that hosts elections on the Internet, says "I personally think this is very good for democracy. It's more convenient to vote from home. I think you would find a lot of people would vote over the Internet who otherwise wouldn't be voting."

"There are people who have expressed fear that if you give everybody the right to vote over the Internet, you are going to move the United States from a republican form of government to a more a pure democracy form of government."

"But I respond by saying anytime our representatives can hear clearly, quickly and precisely what the citizens feel about an issue, then I think the politicians can make a more reasoned judgment about what to do. It can only help."

In the scheme of things, McMaster's election is fairly innocuous. There isn't the concern about Internet access, as there would be with a more general population. The rare student who does not have a computer with an Internet connection at home, can certainly find one on campus to place a vote.

At the voting website, run by McMaster, students type in their student number and personal identification number, and they receive a virtual ballot.

They fill out the ballot, send it in electronically, and the software automatically records the vote. Bruce Frank, secretary of McMaster's board of governors, says privacy is assured because the software doesn't allow administrators of the election to match student names with their ballots.

The electronic polls opened Wednesday morning and will close this afternoon. More than 2,000 full-time and part-time graduate students are eligible to vote for their favourites among five candidates. When it is over, officials believe there will be a higher voter turnout than normal.

"There has been more interest in this grad school election than we have had for many years", says Frank. "We haven't had to have an election since the mid '90s because normally we just get one nominee and the person is acclaimed. So the fact that we have five candidates is significant."

If the election is successful, it's expected that future campus elections will be held in the same way.

The University of Western Ontario hosted an electronic election last month to vote on students' council representatives. More than 25 per cent of eligible voters took part, making it the highest turnout in 8 years and second highest in 12 years.

Flood says "for the first time in history, corporations, homeowner associations, condominium associations, labour unions, student unions, not-for-profit associations, or any other group, have at their disposal an efficient and secure voting, testing, surveying, and polling method that permits their distant members to vote on any topic or election."

Internet voting was used in a Republican party presidential straw poll in Alaska in January. But only 35 of the 4,000 votes cast used the Internet. And later this month, organizers of the Arizona Democratic presidential primary plan to hold a portion of their primary online. The move has raised the ire of an American organization called the Voting Integrity Project.

The group is arguing Internet voting unfairly discriminates against African-American, Native-American and Hispanic voters in violation of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

They point to the "digital divide" found in a recent U.S. Department of Commerce report. The report says whites are more likely to have Internet access from home than most racial and ethnic minorities from any location including home, works, school, or library.

Consequently, VIP argued "the Internet voting system planned for the Arizona democratic presidential primary will have the effect of maximizing affluent white participation relative to non-Whites in the primary."

In addition, a statement VIP president Deborah Phillip said: "Internet voting, however well-intentioned, is not secure from fraud and is grossly unfair to persons without Internet access. This is just a new millennium version of the literacy test."

Party members can vote in the primary in the usual way at polling stations. But only for one day -- March 11. The opportunity to vote over the Web starts two days before.

VIP and two Arizona democratic voters sought an injunction against Internet voting in the primary. But a federal judge rejected the arguments. VIP says it will appeal.

Flood says controversies like that have encouraged iballot.com to stay out of public elections for now.

Iballot.com is focusing on private organizations for clients. The company charges clients a dollar for every vote cast over its website.

Flood says "Organizations can use a tool like this to more often take the pulse of their members on any given issue. I think that makes a lot of sense. In many organizations, the membership gets upset with the leadership and it is really a communication issue."

"If you had a tool that you could easily translate that information between members and managements, then I think whatever decision management made would be better supported by the members."

Flood says, that given the controversy over the Arizona primary, he feels legislations should be drafted.

"I think there needs to be a public policy debate and legislation needs to be written to permit or not permit public elections. What are the safeguards going to be? It's such a new technology that the ground rules have not been established."

Jones, however, says the concerns go beyond legalities.

"Software has bugs," he says. "There are technical concerns of software reliability and anticipating the load or traffic.

"What happens if you wait to the last minute to vote and you can't get onto the voting web site because it is too busy. And you sit there ... the clock ticks away and you don't get to vote."

"There is also an issue of authentication. How can we tell if it is reall David Jones who is voting? or whether he is voting freely? Frank says he has concerns as well about the widespread use of Internet voting. "For institutional voting I can see definite advantages but I would not draw any conclusions about taking this to a municipal, provincial, or federal election."