Canada

Articles about voting issues in Canada.

Strathcona County council gave its thumbs up at a meeting on April 24 to a partnership with the City of Edmonton and the City of St. Albert to establish an internet voting pilot project for the 2013 municipal election. Jacqueline Roblin, manager of Strathcona County Legislative and Legal Services (LLS), stated in her presentation to council that the pilot would be applied to solely the special ballot process for those people who will be absent from the jurisdiction during the 2013 election. She noted that administration wants to add an amendment allowing for any voter to vote through this process. “We’re taking it in a very small portion of our election so that we can test out our systems and that will gradually start to build voter confidence in the process,” Roblin said. Read More »

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Robocalls

A Republican political operative who spent three months in an American prison for making illegal political calls says that fraudulent calls in the last Canadian election are likely an American import. In his 2008 book How to Rig an Election, Allen Raymond tells the story of his 10-year political career, which ended abruptly when he was convicted of jamming the New Hampshire Democrats’ phone bank during a Senate election. When the FBI closed in, officials on the Republican National Committee cut off Raymond, and rather than face 25 years in prison, he co-operated with the investigation. Raymond, who now works in Washington as a lobbyist for a labour organization, suspects whoever made illegal voter-suppression calls in Canada in the last election likely learned their dirty tricks south of the border. Read More »

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While Huntsville council tackles election topics such as ward boundaries, some residents believe the issue of electronic voting should be the primary concern. Grant Hallman, a retired resident who spent a career in software development, has said council’s decision to discuss in 2013 whether electronic voting or traditional paper ballots will be used in the 2014 municipal election will not give the municipality enough time for thorough debate. Hallman said it will likely not give the municipality enough time to switch back to paper ballots if council decides it does not want to use the telephone and Internet voting method used in the previous municipal election. There are several concerns Hallman and others have with the electronic voting method. Read More »

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A poll being released Tuesday morning by the Council of Canadians shows a pattern of misleading election calls targeting opposition supporters in the seven ridings where the organization is seeking new elections. The poll, conducted April 13-19 by Ekos Research Associates, found that Liberal, NDP and Green party supporters in the seven ridings were more much more likely to report receiving a telephone call late in the election directing them to the wrong polling station than Conservative supporters, or opposition supporters in other ridings. Read More »

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An advanced cyber-assault, which created chaos during the federal NDP party’s election, has been attributed to a specialized Web hacker who utilized over 10,000 PCs globally for so slackening the pace of the online-voting that it started to crawl, thus published vancouversun.com… dated March 28, 2012. Actually, according to the provider of the Internet-based balloting, Scytl Canada, one Denial-of-Service assault was deliberately unleashed with the objective of disrupting the voting exercise by the NDP on 24th March 2012. It was determined that the assault successfully clogged the channel of the voting mechanism so voters had to wait long to gain access. This slackening of the voting speed thus frustrated the party’s representatives gathered at Toronto. Read More »

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The recent New Democratic Party convention in Toronto may have done more than just select Thomas Mulcair as the party’s new leader. It may have also buried the prospect of online voting in Canada for the foreseeable future. While Internet-based voting supporters have consistently maintained that the technology is safe and secure, the NDP’s experience — in which a denial of service attack resulted in long delays and inaccessible websites — demonstrates that turning to Internet voting in an election involving millions of voters would be irresponsible and risky. As voter turnout has steadily declined in recent years, Elections Canada has focused on increasing participation by studying Internet-based voting alternatives. The appeal of online voting is obvious. Canadians bank online, take education courses online, watch movies online, share their life experiences through social networks online, and access government information and services online. Given the integral role the Internet plays in our daily lives, why not vote online as well? The NDP experience provides a compelling answer. Read More »

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Although many people are attached at the hip to their laptops, few are conversant in software coding and even fewer are familiar with heavy encryption. Combine computers with the intricacies of elections, and that leaves only a handful of specialists worldwide who can claim to understand online voting. Questions about e-voting were raised after the NDP leadership convention was disrupted by a cyber attack. Not all of them have been answered satisfactorily, say software experts, despite reassurances from Scytl, the software company that handled the NDP election process, and from Halifax Regional Municipality, which has committed to use the company’s services in October’s municipal election. ”Multibillion-dollar (software developers) like Windows, you know, Microsoft . . . can’t have their software bug-free. So I don’t think Scytl is able to do that,” said Daniel Sokolov, a Halifax information technology expert. Sokolov has examined several European elections that used e-voting and found at least three with troubling results. Read More »

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NDP

The company that ran the online voting system used to help choose the winner of the weekend’s NDP leadership race is now blaming several hours of delays on a “malicious, massive” attack on its voting system. In a news release, Barcelona-based Scytl said “well over 10,000 malevolent IP addresses” were used in a Distributed Denial of Service attack, which generated hundreds of thousands of false voting requests to the system. ”We deeply regret the inconvenience to NDP voters caused by this malicious, massive, orchestrated attempt to thwart democracy,” Susan Crutchlow, general manager of Scytl Canada said in a statement. The attack effectively “jammed up the pipe” into the voting system, delaying voter access, the statement said. ”This network of malevolent computers, commonly known as a ‘botnet,’ was located on computers around the world but mainly in Canada.” Read More »

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The Halifax Regional Municipality will be reviewing a decision to award a Spanish e-voting company a contract for this October’s election. This in the wake of e-voting delays that plagued the federal NDP leadership convention in Toronto on Saturday. Scytl, the Spanish company that oversaw the convention’s e-voting, was awarded a contract in January to provide electronic voting for the upcoming HRM election. “With the events of the weekend … we certainly will be reviewing the situation with the company,” Mayor Peter Kelly said on Sunday. “(HRM will) determine whether or not this was an issue of just malfunction, or other factors as was indicated (by the NDP).” Read More »

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New Democrats remained tight-lipped Sunday about the cyber-attack that kept the country waiting for hours at Saturday’s leadership convention. Party brass refused to disclose the source of two Internet Protocol addresses that they say perpetrated an attack meant to disrupt its online voting system, as they tried to manage Thomas Mulcair’s first day as head of the federal NDP. The party is investigating the attack, in tandem with its voting system provider, Scytl, auditors Price Waterhouse Cooper and a number of “experts,” party president Rebecca Blaikie said on Sunday. “At this point, there is not a single point person,” Blaikie said of the investigation. “We’re going to investigate what (the attack) is, where it came from. . . As soon as we know that, we’ll be able to decide what to do next.” Blaikie said neither police nor Elections Canada have been contacted. The NDP identified the IP addresses, essentially identification tags assigned to web-wired devices, as perpetrators of a denial-of-service (DNS) attack. While the party insists the results were not compromised, some are questioning the integrity of the final, fourth-round ballot, which propelled Thomas Mulcair to victory after more than 12 hours of voting. Read More »

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Canada

The NDP has not yet called in the police to investigate an orchestrated attempt to sabotage the electronic voting system the party used to choose a new leader. But it’s not ruling out the possibility once it unmasks the hacker responsible for repeated cyber-attacks that caused lengthy delays in Saturday’s leadership vote. The party had hoped to crown their new leader in time for supper-hour newscasts, before television viewers could switch to the Saturday night hockey games. The cyber attacks frustrated those plans; it was after 9 p.m. ET before Thomas Mulcair was declared the winner. Party president Rebecca Blaikie said Sunday that party officials, vote auditors and Scytl — the high-tech Spanish company hired to secure the electronic voting system — are still working to determine who was responsible. ”What we know is that there was an organized attempt to clog the site,” Blaikie said. Read More »

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Kelly

The Halifax Regional Municipality will take a close look at the e-voting problems experienced at the federal NDP leadership convention because it is planning to use the same Spanish company in the October municipal election. Mayor Peter Kelly said ensuring the integrity of the vote in the Halifax region is of the utmost importance. ”We take the voting aspect very, very seriously and I think to be fair to all parties we have to make sure there is a thorough review and investigation of this situation,”he said Sunday. ”Then if there is a threat of this in the upcoming election, then we need to take that very seriously and determine the best way forward.” Scytl Secure Electronic Voting, from Spain, won the contract after underbidding Intelivote Systems Inc. of Dartmouth by more than $300,000. Intelivote provided online and telephone voting for the previous two municipal elections. Read More »

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Delays in online voting at the NDP leadership convention have been blamed on hackers, with party officials saying they have found evidence of the attack. Jamey Heath, the NDP’s communications manager, said the party had managed to trace the Internet Protocol addresses of two perpetrators. ”They’ve isolated it to individual IP addresses. Votes that have been cast are secure,” he said. The delays had threatened to become a full-scale public relations disaster for the party that even had some people questioning the integrity of the end result. There were lineups of more than an hour at the Metro Toronto Convention centre as the system slowed down. Eligible voters across the country were also getting online error messages. Read More »

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Canada

An attempted cyber-attack on the NDP’s electronic voting system Saturday forced party officials to delay the process of choosing the next federal New Democrat leader for several hours, frustrating voters both at the convention in Toronto and across the country. Party officials insisted the integrity of the voting system was not compromised, but acknowledged that the would-be hacker managed to “mess” it up enough to cause lengthy delays. ”The system has not been compromised,” said Brad Lavigne, a former party national director who was dispatched to explain the problem to reporters. ”The system was not hacked. It was never even close to being hacked.” Lavigne said someone outside the party tried to get access to the system, triggering alarms that caused the system to shut down. ”The analogy that can be used is that somebody was trying to break into our house and the alarm went off and the robbers were scared away.” He stopped short of suggesting someone was deliberately trying to sabotage the NDP leadership process. Read More »

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The United States and Mexico have not been the only places where the right wing has committed electoral fraud to win recent elections. There is evidence to suggest the Conservative Party of Canada used voter suppression schemes to help it win the 2011 elections. While ballot boxes didn’t actually go missing, the Conservatives may have flooded ridings (electoral districts) with automated, pre-recorded phone messages designed to disfranchise supporters of rival candidates. In the Ontario riding of Guelph, it is alleged by Elections Canada, the country’s election authority, that a Conservative operative using the alias “Pierre Poutine” made automated calls to suppress votes. During the 2011 elections, there was a tight race between the leading Conservative and Liberal Party candidates. False messages, supposedly from Elections Canada, sent hundreds of rival non-Conservative voters chasing non-existent polling stations on Election Day. Read More »

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Mayrand

The man in charge of Elections Canada has broken his silence on the fraudulent robo-calls controversy, divulging that the agency has received 700 specific complaints about phony dialling from the 2011 ballot in the past three weeks. In his first statement on the matter, Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand also strongly hinted Thursday that he would like to be called before a parliamentary committee so he can offer more detail about the allegations received. His office is already investigating what it has alleged in court filings is an operative connected to the Conservative campaign in Guelph, Ont., one it believes used an alias “Pierre Poutine” and misleading robo-calls to try to suppress voting by supporters of rival parties. A senior Conservative government official said later Thursday that the Tories, who control House and Senate committees, are “amenable” to having Mr. Mayrand speak before MPs. The Commons, however, is rising for a spring break after March 16 and MPs won’t be sitting again until March 26. Read More »

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Voters in Yarmouth won’t be filling out paper ballots or using polling booths in this year’s municipal election. Yarmouth town council voted late last week to do away with paper and conduct the October vote entirely by computer and telephone. Some communities that have chosen electronic voting have also opted for a paper ballot backup system, but the Town of Yarmouth is not one of them, said Mayor Phil Mooney. If folks don’t want to vote from their living rooms or the front seats of their cars using a smartphone, they can still come to town hall and use equipment set up there, said Mooney. ”There’s going to be one central poll,” he said Saturday. Read More »

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More than 100 people rallied in Winnipeg Sunday to urge the House of Commons to get to the bottom of the robocall scandal. ”This is something that affects everyone,” said 22-year-old Jonathan Ventura, carrying a polling station sign with arrows pointing in all directions. The student, who doesn’t belong to a political party, was joined by MPs past and present, pro-democracy, peace, labour and environmental group members at the corner of River Avenue and Osborne Street, carrying signs and waving Canadian flags. Similar demonstrations took place across Canada Sunday. Read More »

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The city is looking to let some people vote through the Internet in the next election as it replaces the voting system that’s served since the 1997 municipal election. The existing machines, made by Diebold, were built to last 15 years, according to tender documents the city posted this week, and since 15 years are up, it’s time to buy or rent new ones. The city has published a “request for qualifications,” aiming to make a shortlist of bidders who will then fight it out in a second competition for city business. The new gear is supposed to be ready for 2014 and the city anticipates using it in any subsequent byelections and probably again in 2018. Read More »

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Elections Canada has extended its probe of phony election calls to include yet another Ontario riding as the watchdog agency launches an online complaint form to help field reports from concerned voters. Canadians who think “fraudulent calls interfered with their right to vote, or who have information about such calls” are being asked to pass along what they know to elections investigators, it says. Elections Canada has enlarged its “inquiry” centre to handle the high volume of phone calls and email traffic, agency spokesperson Diane Benson said. The agency has been flooded with reports from voters — 31,000 by last Friday — about harassing or misleading phone calls in the 2011 federal election. Read More »

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Elections Canada investigators probing the robocalls scandal are interviewing workers on the Conservative campaign in Guelph, Ont., and trying to determine why payments made to an Edmonton voice-broadcasting company were not declared in financial reports filed with the agency. In recent days, the agency has spoken to at least three workers from the campaign of Conservative candidate Marty Burke, including the official agent responsible for ensuring the campaign’s financial report was accurate. Elections Canada wants to know why the costs of automated calls the campaign has admitted sending out never appeared in the campaign’s expense report, as required by law. Andrew Prescott, the deputy campaign manager, said he is co-operating with the investigation and handing over bills he received from RackNine Inc. for a series of robocalls promoting Burke events during the election. The same company was used to transmit misleading Elections Canada calls on election day. Read More »

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Canada’s Conservative government said Saturday there appeared to have been deliberate and illegal efforts to suppress votes in one constituency during last year’s national election, though a spokesman didn’t say whether the party now thought members, or those working for them, were responsible. Canada’s election agency is probing allegations that some Canadian voters were misled about the location of polling places by automated phone calls, or robocalls, during an election in May 2011. Opposition politicians have accused the Conservatives of an orchestrated attempt at suppressing votes, a charge the party has denied. The comments by Dean Del Mastro, a Conservative legislator and the main government spokesman for the controversy, marked the first time the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has acknowledged there may have been specific wrongdoing. Read More »

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The Conservative Party campaign co-chair agrees with a former top Elections Canada official on one thing — the courts should throw the book at whoever is behind calls to deliberately mislead voters in the 2011 election. Lawyer Guy Giorno, Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff now back in the private sector, told CTV’s Question Period that “suppression of vote is a despicable, reprehensible practice and everybody ought to condemn it. “So I wish Godspeed to Elections Canada and the RCMP investigators. We want them to get to the bottom of this and let’s hope the full weight of the law is applied to any and all.”  Read More »

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Harper

A probe into “robocalls” that misdirected Canadian voters to fake polling stations during last year’s election, won by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories, is casting suspicion on the results. It is not yet clear who was behind the automated telephone calls to voters in the town of Guelph, Ontario in spring 2011 that reportedly led to a chaotic scene at a polling station, and likely led some to give up on voting. The opposition parties, whose supporters were apparently targeted, pointed fingers at the Conservatives, but the Conservatives denied any involvement while hitting back at what they claimed was a “smear campaign.” Elections Canada, after being inundated with complaints, is now investigating the rogue calls, aided by the federal police, as new allegations are raised daily. At a press conference on Tuesday, outspoken New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin described the misleading pre-recorded calls claiming to be from Elections Canada as a “heinous affront to democracy.” ”How is this different from a bunch of goons with clubs blocking the door to a voter station,” he said. Read More »

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Canada

Elections Canada said Friday it is investigating more than 31,000 complaints of alleged dirty tricks during last year’s election won by Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories. The “high volume” of complaints regarding “robocalls” that misdirected voters to fake polling stations for the May 2, 2011 election is 100 times more than the elections watchdog usually receives for any Canadian ballot. ”Elections Canada is reviewing these and will take action as appropriate,” spokesman John Enright said in an email. Read More »

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Canada appear to be on the verge of a major political upheaval thanks to the investigative work of two enterprising reporters working for news outlets that are generally considered Conservative-friendly. The story broke last week after a nine-month investigation by reporters Stephen Maher (Postmedia News) and Glen McGregor (Ottawa Citizen). They were curious about reports of strange phone calls voters were getting across Canada during the federal election campaign. Some of the calls were purportedly from parties they supported by the voters being called but came at annoying times or had offensive content. Some came, supposedly, from elections officials and had false information about where to vote. Maher and McGregor compiled a massive database of these calls and, last week, they broke what has become known as the Robocall scandal. ”It has become quite clear that the Conservatives have no decent line of defence, here. They’re flying blind.” Read More »

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racknine

Elections Canada has traced fraudulent phone calls made during the federal election to an Edmonton voice-broadcast company that worked for the Conservative Party across the country. While the agency investigates, aided by the RCMP, the Conservatives are conducting an internal probe. A party lawyer is interviewing campaign workers to find who was behind the deceptive “robocalls.” Elections Canada launched its investigation after it was inundated with complaints about election day calls in Guelph, Ont., one of 18 ridings across the country where voters were targeted by harassing or deceptive phone messages in an apparent effort to discourage Liberal supporters from voting. In Guelph, a riding the Conservatives hoped to take from the Liberals, voters received recorded calls pretending to be from Elections Canada, telling them their polling stations had been moved. The calls led to a chaotic scene at one polling station, and likely led some voters to give up on voting. Read More »

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Troubles with voting machines during the 2011 civic election revealed through a Freedom of Information request are another reason to reform civic elections, says an unsuccessful mayoral candidate. Randy Helten of Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver received 226 pages about preventive maintenance and repairs of the City of Vancouver’s 160 AccuVote-OS machines. Records show the units were tested in late February and early March 2011, but a document titled AccuVote Call Sheet lists 37 malfunction incidents between Nov. 9 and 19. “The [Nov. 23] staff report from the chief election officer made absolutely no mention of any problem at all,” Helten said. “This is worthy of further discussion. This leads to the need for discussion about is it appropriate for employees of the city to be chief election officer?” Read More »

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Municipal elections are just nine months away and, perhaps not surprisingly, electronic voting has been a recent subject of discussion for local councils.
Truro Town Council received a pitch from a Halifax-based company lauding the virtues of electronic voting and tabled it for further discussion. Colchester County Council, meanwhile, rejected the idea outright. At the risk of sounding ridiculously old-fashioned, we concur with the go-slow or no-go approach to electronic voting. At least for the time being.  Read More »

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Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) was only being financially prudent in deciding to go with a Spanish company over a Dartmouth-based company to provide internet voting options for the 2012 municipal election, the councillor for Eastern Shore-Musquodoboit Valley said. Steve Streatch was reacting to Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) regional council’s decision to award Scytl the contract for telephone and internet voting services for the October 20, 2012 municipal election over a company that had done the same task in the 2008 municipal election. Read More »

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Council picked the cheaper — but not local — option to provide telephone and e-voting for the next election. Scytl Secure Electronic Voting, a Spanish firm, bid $553,007 for the contract to distribute voter notification cards and two weeks of advance polling over the Internet and by phone for October’s municipal election. Intelivote Systems Inc. from Dartmouth has previously done the work but their bid was $330,000 over Scytl’s proposal. Read More »

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Edmonton could see a pilot pro-gram to test Internet voting in the next civic election, officials say. E-voting, which can include using phones, electronic ballots or the Internet, has occurred in more than 30 Ontario municipalities and four Nova Scotia jurisdictions.

Several Alberta centres, including Edmonton, Calgary, St. Albert and Strathcona County, are interested in trying the new technology, Laura Kennedy, Edmonton’s director of elections and corporate records, said Wednesday.

The group might work with Municipal Affairs on a small trial during the 2013 election, possibly focused on the special ballots sent to people who will be away or can’t get to the polling booth, she said. ”We could all explore a different aspect of it,” said Kennedy, who estimated about 700 special ballots were mailed out in Edmonton for the 2010 election. ”We could have different iterations and compare the results at the end.” Read More »

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The city is looking at the possibility of electronic voting in the next Edmonton civic election. E-voting, which can mean casting ballots through the Internet or over the telephone, has been tried over the last decade in other parts of Canada and several European countries. Staff expect to come up with proposals by next fall on potential options, including electronic ballots and touch screens, to properly prepare for any e-voting in the 2013 election.

While they will discuss what can be achieved, costs and how the system could work, a report to be discussed by city council Wednesday says developing and testing Internet voting would take too long to be ready for the next campaign.

… There have been problems in other countries. The U.K. introduced test programs in 2002 involving voting via telephone, the Internet, text message and even digital television, but pulled the plug in 2007 amid security concerns and little change in voter turnout. Read More »

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The District of Sechelt won’t likely be using voting machines made by Election Systems and Software ever again, after two of four machines provided by the company broke down during the 2011 municipal election.

“Needless to say, I will be recommending that we do not use the same machine supplier again in the future,” said Sechelt’s chief election officer Jo-Anne Frank. The first machine broke down during advanced voting at the Seaside Centre. A faulty sensor was found to be the issue. Read More »

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The Canadian province of British Columbia may be inching closer to instituting Internet voting following a Nov. 21 recommendation by Elections B.C., the governmental organization responsible for conducting local elections.

In a report to the legislative assembly, Chief Electoral Officer Keith Archer says he recommends (legislators “may wish to consider,” he says) parliamentary authorization of Internet voting pilots for provincial elections. ”I love the idea,” B.C. Attorney General Shirley Bond told the Vancouver Sun, adding that she’s empaneling experts to examine Internet voting. Read More »

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