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This month municipalities around Nova Scotia held their municipal elections and special plans had to be made to ensure elections were done safely during the COVID-19 pandemic, primarily in the form of hosting elections online.
The trend of eVoting has been on the rise for years but the pandemic forced a surge of demand. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen hundreds of municipalities make the switch (mostly in Ontario) as people have seen it as a more convenient and cheaper option,” said Dean Smith the President of Intelivote who help administer online elections.
While necessity forced many of the municipalities to make the switch he thinks now that bureaucrats would have seen the benefits they’re likely to use it again.
“This year, in particular, we heard that municipalities were worried about how they could ensure the safety of their polling station volunteers and eVoting was the solution most turned to,” said Smith.
The Town of Bridgewater had used eVoting previously and Mayor David Mitchell says in those elections there have been no issues.
Mitchell also thinks the towns that had their first experience with eVoting this year are likely to stick with it, saying, “I wouldn’t be surprised if we see many municipalities move to only electronic voting going forward.”
As for when eVoting may be incorporated into federal elections, it’s likely the government wants more time.
According to Intelivotes President, there was a recent hearing on the issue in which many experts in cybersecurity passed on their expertise to MPs and he summarized the expert’s opinions by saying ” In their opinions, there is still some work to be done before eVoting is part of primetime (the federal election).”
Still, he says it is inevitable that eVoting will become part of federal elections at some point in the future.
