Police may be called in to probe the suspected hacking of the online voting system used to elect Jim Prentice as Alberta Tory party leader and premier-designate, a senior party official said Sunday. PC party executive director Kelley Charlebois said it appears there were multiple attempts to infiltrate the website during the 36 hours of voting that ended at 6 p.m. Saturday. “Attempts were made throughout the voting process to hack into the system,” Charlebois said in an interview. He said there appear to have been several cyberattacks on the website and possibly the telephone voting system. “I can’t say if it was organizations or individuals, I just know that different attempts were made through different IP addresses.” Charlebois stressed the attempts to infiltrate the system were thwarted by internal security systems. He said the party is still waiting for a full report from the company hired to conduct the online vote and will call in police to investigate once the attacks are confirmed. “We certainly feel it is our responsibility — if we suspect the law has been broken — that we contact the appropriate authorities,” he said. “We haven’t reached a point yet where we have confirmed all the information.”
The party executive director said there were also other attempts to cheat that were detected and thwarted.
In addition to the unsuccessful attempts to cheat, a number of party members attempted to vote twice, Charlebois said.
“We enabled them to do that, so in that case we don’t consider it cheating. We’re simply going to disallow the second vote they cast.”
The move to e-voting has been surrounded by controversy with hundreds of party members flooding the phone lines of candidates and MLAs on the weekend to complain of problems with the system. Many claimed they were unable to vote.
Full Article: Hacking of online vote thwarted.