Cyber voting system scrutinized ACTUALITÉ • NEWS
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The township will use the cyber vote sys- tem for the mayoral byelection, which takes place from Dec. 12 to 15. Municipal admin- istration will use all means available to in- crease public awareness of the byelection and nominated candidates, and the cyber vote method. Voters with questions about the system, if they are on the voters list, and if they do not receive their voter I.D. and P.I.N. numbers in time to vote, should either phone or go to the township o#ce on Rue Notre-Dame in Embrun before the voting period starts. The City of Clarence-Rockland’s experi- ment with cyber voting twice su"ered glitches with secure mail-out delivery of the Voter I.D. and P.I.N. numbers, forcing the city to suspend the original voter cyber bal- lot setup and have sta" rush to create a new replacement arrangement. Administration organized and advertised voter registration stations in Rockland, Clarence Creek and Bourget so that residents could get their new Voter I.D. and P.I.N. numbers and also have the option to cast their ballots on-site or else wait until they returned home and made their candidates choices by phone or Internet. Many voters were still waiting in line at the various registration stations on Election Day Monday, forcing city ad- ministration to extend the allowed voting period to 10 p.m. that night rather than cut it o" at 8 p.m., which resulted in delayed an- nouncement of voting results for Clarence- Rockland.
GREGGCHAMBERLAIN gregg.chamberlain@eap.on.ca
The company responsible for the cyber voting setup for civic elections in seve- ral Prescott-Russell municipalities is now doing some damage control work to ex- plain what went wrong. Scytl Canada sent out emails to its mu- nicipal election clients both in Eastern Ontario and elsewhere following the Oct. 27 municipal elections in the province. In a copy of the letter, Scytl Canada spokes- man Brian O’Connor states that the com- pany provided “secure online voting” in 21 municipalities for this year’s civic elections. The system set up allowed voters to cast their ballots by either phone or computer Internet Link using what was supposed to con!dential Voter I.D. and P.I.N. numbers for logging in. The setup su"ered glitches, ranging from problems with the Voter I.D. and P.I.N. number mailouts that raised con- cern about the security of some indi- vidual voter ballots to technical di#cul- ties that slowed down announcement of voter results until close to midnight in some municipalities. Regarding the technical setup, O’Connor stated that it “ran as expected with election results being automatically created.” Scytl technicians noted during auditing of the voting process “that elec- tion result !les had been mislabeled due to human error.”The results were still valid but !ve of the !les had the wrong municipality name attached to them. Two of the com- pany’s municipal clients received the vot- ing results for other communities instead of their own and the company had to cor- rect that situation too. Scytl Canada sta" chose to rerun the en- tire system with the electoral board moni- toring the results rather than rename the !les. This resulted in a delayed posting of election results for several of the compa- ny’s municipal clients, but O’Connor stated, “Scytl and the Election Board con!rm that the election results are 100 per cent accu- rate.” In a backgrounder to the letter, Scytl Canada states it has never experienced a similar situation before and that the com- pany has managed more than 100,000 cy- ber elections during the past 10 years in more than 35 countries. Scytl Canada will evaluate an addition to its cyber voting system to prevent such a glitch from hap- pening again. Meanwhile several of the company’s sev- en municipal clients in Prescott-Russell are reviewing their experience this year with cyber voting. Alfred-Plantagenet Township was the one municipality that stuck with the traditional paper ballot system and ex- perienced no great delays in the results of its civic election. In The Nation municipality, Mayor Fran- çois St-Amour said he and his new council will wait for administration to present a de- tailed report on the electronic ballot setup. But the mayor himself may already be hav- ing second thoughts about e-voting. “We’re really going to have to look at do we go back paper ballots?” he said during
summary report on the cyber vote matter. The !nance department is still collecting and tallying details of sta" hours and other related expenses. “They were talking about server problems, They should have been ready for that”, said The Nation mayor François St-Amour.
a phone interview Nov. 3. “We’re going to have to do something before the next election.” Besides the delay in results, the cyber vote process in The Nation also experi- enced some problems with delivery of Voter I.D. numbers in some neighbour- hoods. After receiving reports of the missing I.D.s, the municipality created a replacement voter I.D. setup at the village o#ce, available to residents who came there in person on Election Day Monday and presented valid identi!cation. Mayor St-Amour expressed disappoint- ment with Scytl Canada’s explanation about the cyber vote glitch situation. “They were talking about server prob- lems,” he said, referring to the company’s letter. “They should have been ready for that.” During its Nov. 3 session Russell Town- ship council received a 20-page report from administration about results of and experience with cyber voting for the township. “Although we all realized that the (de- layed) announcement of the results, which was not under our control, left a sour feeling of this new process of voting,” the report stated, “the administration’s overall feeling, however, was that elec- tronic voting was a positive change. We certainly entertain utilizing this alternate voting process for the coming (mayoral) by-election and others in years to come.” The report goes into detail on the strengths and weaknesses of the cyber vote setup. Coun. Calvin Pol, acting mayor for the Nov. 3 council session, made one critical observation about Scytl Canada’s overall handling of the situation. “I think one of the problems was lack of communications on their part (Scytl),” Pol said. “I feel sorry for the (poll) clerks who had to sit waiting with nothing to report.” Township administration will provide council at a later session with a !nancial “I feel sorry for the (poll) clerks who had to sit waiting with nothing to report, said Russell’s acting mayor, councillor Calvin Pol.
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