Electronic voting in Whitby-Oshawa byelection

Some voters in Thursday’s Whitby-Oshawa byelection not only be casted ballots for the candidate of their choice, they were also be part of an experiment that could lead to the first real change in the way Ontarians vote in nearly 100 years.

Elections Ontario ran a pilot project using electronic vote tabulator machines in 42 of the 70 polls in the riding. “Clearly our job is to look at how we can modernize the electoral process by the same means ensuring that we maintain the integrity, transparency, those core pillars of our democracy while we invoke technology into the process,” Chief Electoral Officer Greg Essensa said. “We are, in fact, piloting three initiatives in this byelection,” Greg Essensa added.

In addition to the voting machines, a scanning machine was used to electronically check off names from the voting list. And, there will be a new staffing model. The technology has been around for a long time. It has been used successfully for municipal elections in Toronto for more than a decade. Elections Ontario will submit a report on the experiment to the Ontario legislature with the hope that the new technology could be used across the province in the 2018 election.