Minutes for Web Election Committee Meeting
Present at the meeting: Andrew Morgan (chair), John Bell, Matt Napier, Emily Lord, Andrew Wakefield, Tanya Magnus
We jumped into discussion on four options presented in the agenda, namely:
1) ROSI
2) Trinity Server Options
3) E-mail options
4) Other options
Here are our thoughts on each option, both it’s Pros and Cons:
1) ROSI Option
After discussing all of the other options, we decided that this would be the best option, of all the Internet voting options, but this option still presented major problems.
Pros:
Ø The module to run elections is already in place in this system, due to it running the SAC and GC elections.
Ø Student Affairs of the University would probably pick up the costs for the development of a module just for Trinity.
Ø Everyone, res and non-res would have access to voting.
Ø The CRO does not have to devote an entire day to sitting by the ballot box.
Ø ROSI is the most secure option.
Cons:
Ø ROSI’s current system does not have the capability to do preferential balloting, and the time and effort that it would take to develop a program that could do this, would be equal to the amount of time that it took them to form the first program.
Ø The data entry for this option would be very difficult and time consuming, and could not be taken on by a student, since student are allowed to have nothing other then a web interface with ROSI. Therefore, all of the data entry and results would have to come through the Registrar office – thus making the CRO job unless.
Ø ROSI hasn’t decided whether or not they are in the elections business. We could make a formal request that they decide this, but even if they make that decision, we would not have everything in place for this year, the earliest would be next year’s elections.
Ø It is easy to lock out students from ROSI, thus making it impossible to vote, by using their student number and logging in three times with the wrong password.
Ø There could be no scrutinizers
Ø Trinity would have to provide ROSI with eligibility lists with student’s year of entry, res/non-res status, humanities/social sciences/science status.
2) Trinity Server Option:
The Trinity Bursar’s lodge would give out one random number to every Trin. Student that went into them, and this number would be their log in and password to the voting site. There could either be one number for all elections, or one for every week. We would need to find a programmer to design the database that this feed into.
Pros:
Ø It is an internal Trin. system so could be made to meet with our elections rules.
Ø It is relatively inexpensive
Cons:
Ø Every student that wanted to vote would still have to come into Trinity and physically pick up his or her number.
Ø It is recreating a smaller version of ROSI
Ø It would be really hard to program in all the exclusion and eligibility conditions that exist in our elections
Ø The student number of students who voted would become more visible.
Ø Elections are too small to really legitimize this option
Ø There could be no scrutinizers with allowing them to see how every single Trin. Student voted
3) Email Option
This is the system that the Engineers use. Everyone engineer that wants to vote in their elections sends an email to the CRO, at a special CRO account, using their ecf accounts – which they have to get when the sign up for their program. The CRO then responds to everyone email, with just the contents of the original text, to ensure that people were not fake voting. This option could be made into Trin.’s using either everyone’s Trinity account, or their Utoronto account. This option assumes that everyone has a secure email site, and that they check it regularly.
Pros:
Ø It is a little bi like the uber-ballot that was used for the last two weeks of elections last year.
Ø Non-res. could vote easily.
Ø If people didn’t have either a Trinity or Utoronto account, then we could use the email account that people placed in the Head’s Package.
Ø We could also get Jennifer Hall to do a ROSI pull (where she finds the email address that all students are using for ROSI) and then the ballots could be sent there. This has the added advantage of making people update their information on ROSI
Cons:
Ø People could stack that Head’s Package with fake names to allow for more voting opportunities.
Ø Hotmail and other web-based email account are a problem, because there is no way to ensure that the student who opened it, is the person that they claim to be.
Ø The Engineers aren’t quite as apathetic as Trinity students are, so they vote more often, and take the time to pay attention to their ecf accounts.
Ø Does not allow for scrutinizers
Ø Does not allow for anonymous voting
Ø Have to create the database to implement it.
Ø The voters themselves would have to decide their eligibility and the CRO would have to check everyone.
Ø It means a lot more man-hours for the CRO.
4) Other Options:
CRO sitting at a computer in the Buttery with a swipe card verifier.
This option solves the problem around the CRO have exclusive access to the ballot box for an entire day.
This option could not allow for scrutinizers, unless they are allowed to see the list of students that voted.
Does not solve the non-res. problem
The computer would have to be secure, but we could use a Trinity lock box, which apparently there are a few around college.
General Thoughts on Internet voting:
After discussing all the options, we noticed that the same problems were coming up:
Ø It is very difficult to have scrutinizers without sacrificing voter privacy
Ø None of the present options allows for preferential voting, without a lot of extra man-hours, and due to the magnitude of some of the elections that we are holding, preferential balloting is really Trinity’s only option.
Ø Our rule of no campaigning doesn’t work when we go to the internet, because people do not have a chance to see the people that they are voting for, and the non- res. would have never have heard of most of the candidates. So we could allow for Internet campaigning only, but that would turn elections into a race to see who could find the largest listserv.
Ø With Internet voting it is very hard to make sure that listservs aren’t being sold and being used to campaign with, if we don’t allow campaign., and since the average success rate of a listserv mail out is 10-25% - this is enough to sway any of the Trinity elections.
Ø All of the Internet options leave the election more open to tampering from all sides.
Ø It was generally thought that if a non-res. could come out to vote for an election, then they were showing that they had no interest in voting in the first place. This was raised in the sense of Federal Elections, where if you don’t go out to vote – then you obviously didn’t want to. Also, the Trinity Electoral Policy does allow for proxy voting, so if they couldn’t make it the day of elections, they could find the CRO, and vote earlier.
General Suggestions for Amendments to
the Electoral rules:
Ø Every year after elections, the CRO and DRO prepare a report about how the elections went, and how they should be changed for the following year.
Ø Changed the ballot box into a real ballot box, where either the H of C, or a member of the administration has the key, and only unlocks the box at the end of the day, so that the CRO can not stuff the box before the elections start, and can not tamper with the box during the voting hours.
Ø A re-election should be called if the miscount is greater then the margin of victory.
Ø The scrutinizers protocols needs to be written into the Electoral rules.