Canada to Introduce Electronic Vote Lists, Says Elections Canada Head

A voter walks past a sign directing voters to a polling station for the Canadian federal election in Cremona, Alta., Monday, Oct. 19, 2015. Canada's chief electoral officer says voting day this fall should not be moved. Election day can be no later than Oct. 21 under federal law, which this year falls on the Jewish holiday known as Shemini Atzeret, meaning Orthodox Jews are not permitted to work, vote or campaign. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

Elections Canada will introduce a pilot program to use the country’s first-ever electronic voting lists, despite hesitancy to do so in previous years, says Canada’s chief electoral officer.

“Elections Canada will pilot the use of an electronic list of electors to support voting at any table in the designated polling location should a byelection occur in 2023,” Stéphane Perrault wrote in a 2023–2024 Departmental Plan, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

He said Elections Canada will “invest in migrating data and applications to the cloud,” including to servers outside of Canada. This will help reduce wait times for voters, especially with a diminished workforce at the polls, Perrault said.

The agency planned to run a pilot program using electronic poll books for the fall by-elections in 2018 but pulled the plug when it became clear the technology could not meet Elections Canada standards.

“We would only use a solution that met these very high standards, which proved challenging to the industry,” Elections Canada told CBC News at the time.

A federal Canadian Centre for Cyber Security (CCCS) document that became unclassified last year shows the government’s thinking on poll books, which contain voter lists and voter information.

“Deploying technology to support or replace manual electoral processes can be beneficial. However, inadvertent threats and vulnerabilities may be introduced as well,” it says. “These threats may be associated with the physical manipulation of the poll book device, configuration of hardware system components, software code flaws, supply chain attacks or vulnerabilities associated with the network communication infrastructure.”

The use of poll books “will most likely increase the attack surface,” CCCS said.

The benefits listed include avoiding manual errors, identifying incidents of voters associated with multiple ballots, help with real-time reporting, and improving efficiency.

In the United States, some Republicans are opting out of the controversial Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC). Proponents say it can help combat voter fraud by identifying voters who have died or moved states. But some Republican-led states, including Florida and West Virginia, have expressed concern this month about security and partisan leanings of ERIC and withdrawn, according to the Associated Press.

Currently, Canada’s federal voting system is all on paper.