Information Regarding the Security of Voting using the Internet or Telephone
The Township of Minden Hills has contracted the internet and telephone voting provider
Intelivote Systems Incorporated to manage this part of the 2014 Municipal Election.
Intelivote is the leading Canadian supplier of internet and telephone voting services, and
they have delivered more municipal elections that have used internet and telephone
voting than any other company in the world.
The following will look at common concerns that are raised, with appropriate rebuttal on
why Intelivote, as well as Township of Minden Hills Staff, believe these concerns are not
valid;
Before the personal identification numbers are received by voters, they could be stolen
in transit. Because the "signature" is digital, it's impossible to tell if the right person
voted - a spouse or child could easily impersonate you, as could a neighbour or
complete stranger.
Stealing someone’s voter credentials by stealing their mail or their voter information is
theft and fraud and it is illegal and it has penalties prescribed by legislation. It is
important to note that delivery of ballots via the mail to voters in Ontario has been a
valid method of voting, using mail back ballots (Vote-By-Mail), for close to 20 years.
The Township of Minden Hills itself has used this system for the past three municipal
elections.
In the 2010 Ontario municipal elections there were over 140 municipalities representing
over 1.2 million eligible voters who were offered this method of voting by their
municipality. The probability that someone in the household could take all the paper
ballots, vote them and send them into the election officials in the return mail envelope
has been deemed an acceptable “risk” by all the municipalities using mail back balloting
for years. There is no method of comparison or verification used to prove who sent in
the marked ballot (signatures are not compared as there are none on record); but rather
the basic tenet of elections is used which is trust in the actions and honesty of Canadian
voters.
The use of internet and telephone voting doesn’t present an increased risk of a person
voting for their household any more than the age old and accepted method of vote-bymail currently used by almost 32% of the municipalities in Ontario. The risk may be
there in each method but it has long been accepted as something that has a low level of
occurrence and is deemed an acceptable level of risk by election officials. The tradeoff
has been an increased level of participation. Our point here is not to condone the
practice, but rather to point out that it is something that municipal election officials have
already come to grips with and have accepted the risk, however small. Internet and
telephone voting does not elevate this risk.
Someone could redirect all the voters to another site by mailing a new letter to everyone
who has a PIN
This would suggest that the time, expense, and access to a complete mailing list is
something that would be easily accomplished and worth the cost. This simply isn’t
practical. Further comments that viruses and malware on someone’s computer could
redirect or change a voters vote would additionally require considerable skill and a
method of delivery to voter’s who don’t have any level of antivirus software installed. A
recent study by Statistics Canada revealed over 85% of Canadians have antivirus
software installed and activated on their home PC. The possibility exists, but the
probability that something gets into every voters home or office computer is very remote
and has a low probability.
The System can be hacked and votes can be changed, or someone can find out who I
voted for.
The 2014 Municipal Election will be the fourth election that Internet and Telephone
Voting has been used in Ontario. To date, there have been zero instances of hackers
being able to infiltrate the system to alter votes. The Township of Minden Hills will also
be using an auditor that checks the system daily during the Internet/Telephone Voting
period to ensure that it is working correctly, with no glitches.
As soon as a vote is cast using the internet or telephone, it is impossible to trace it back
to the elector that cast it. Information regarding those electors that have voted is kept
on a different server than the actual votes cast. Because of this, it is impossible to link
an elector’s selections back to the actual elector. The system can only provide the
information that the person has voted in the Election.
The ‘Heart Bleed’ bug can be used to compromise the Voting system
This is a recent and important concern for Canadians, after personal information was
leaked using this ‘bug.’ The Township has been assured by Intelivote that none of their
service offerings have been affected by this. Intelivote has emphasized that this is not a
virus, and therefore can not spread like a virus. Rather, it is a coding error that is
specific to a particular program that Intelivote does not use.
Staff at the Township Office can tamper with the Server
Servers that are being used for Internet and Telephone Voting are located outside of
Ontario and in secure places where physically tampering with them is impossible. As
mentioned above, it is impossible to trace a vote back to someone has information on
who has voted is kept separately from the actual votes cast.
Someone can guess my PIN or steal my mail and vote my PIN.
Each qualified elector will be required to enter their date of birth as well as their PIN to
be able to vote. Each PIN will be a randomly generated eight (8) digit sequence. By
using an 8 digit PIN, there will be a total of 100,000,000 different combinations of PIN
numbers that could be generated. The odds of someone being able to guess one of the
approximately 12,000 PINs that will be generated are very small. Even if they were able
to guess a PIN, they would need to know the date of birth of the elector registered to
that PIN.
When someone steals a piece of mail from another person, they are breaking five
Canadian laws in the process. For the vast majority of Ontarians, this has proven to be
enough of a deterrent, as there are no known cases where mail theft has occurred in
relation to an election. Of course, even if someone was to steal a person’s mail that
contained their PIN, they would need to know that person’s date of birth to be able to
vote the PIN.
Mailing out information used to vote in Municipal Elections is an acceptable risk that has
been occurring for many years in Ontario. In 2010, 1.2 million electors used vote-bymail to elect their municipal governments. Internet and Telephone voting is arguably
more secure, as a birthdate must be entered to vote. Vote-by-mail only requires a
signature on a declaration that can not be verified.