North Vancouver District council wants province to log on to online civic voting

What if voting in a civic election was as easy as clicking a "like" on Instagram?

The District of North Vancouver is hoping to level up the idea of online voting, by asking civic leaders to once again endorse the idea at the annual Union of BC Municipalities conference.

Council voted Monday night to bring a motion to the municipal conference asking the province to change the law to allow online voting.

Coun. Jordan Back said he sees online voting as a way to potentially increase voter turnout for municipal elections, which often hovers between 20 and 30 per cent.

Online voting is not currently allowed in B.C., although it is permitted in some other parts of Canada.

“I do believe that when we look at voter turnout of 22.6 per cent in 2022 here in the district with an all-time low, I think, of around 16 per cent, we should be looking at everything we can possibly do to make voting more accessible,” said Back.

“We live most of our lives online and do so much of our day-to-day tasks online. Looking to local elections as a place to start online voting makes a lot of sense,” he added.

Other councillors agreed. “The world’s evolving. The way we do things needs to adapt,” said Coun. Herman Mah.

Coun. Catherine Pope was also on-side with pushing the province on online voting. “I think we have to do whatever we can to try to increase voter engagement,” she said. “In my mind, it’s worth another shot.”

It’s not the first time the issue has been debated by civic leaders.

UBCM has passed three resolutions since 2011 asking the provincial government to move forward on the issue.

Online voting has been a hot button topic, with just over 51 per cent of delegates voting in favour of the idea in 2015.

So far, however, the province has been reluctant to log on to the plan, citing concerns over security and accuracy of results.

In 2014, an Independent Panel on Internet Voting recommended against online voting, warning there were substantial risks to the accuracy of the voting results.

Coun. Lisa Muri said concerns about security have likely only grown since then.

Foreign interference in elections at all levels has become much more of a worry in recent years, she said, and “AI is another concern.”

“We are getting hacked all the time,” she said. “We are getting emails that are coming from nefarious sources. I do believe the province will probably have the same response.”

Coun. Betty Forbes agreed, adding governments and businesses are regularly getting hacked and suffering security breaches. “So, I don’t think anybody has a full handle on security right now … I don’t think it’s been worked out enough to go this route.”

Mayor Mike Little said one of the concerns with online voting is what happens in the case of a very close or disputed election result, which is currently usually resolved by a judicial recount, involving re-examining paper ballots and re-counting them under the authority of a judge.

Little pointed, tongue in cheek, to the Port Moody election of 2022, where District of North Vancouver CAO David Stuart was elected by just two votes – then subsequently declared unelected after a judicial recount resulted in a tie, and the other candidate’s name was drawn from a hat by a judge. If voting had been online, “Who knows who they would have been stuck with on their council,” joked Little.

A similar situation played out in West Vancouver in 2018 when Mary-Ann Booth won the mayor’s chair over challenger Mark Sager with just 21 votes following a judicial recount of paper ballots.

The majority of District of North Vancouver council members voted to forward the resolution on online voting to UBCM, with Forbes opposed.