Online voting provider blames technical difficulties on bandwidth issues

Several voters were still casting their ballots on Tuesday after issues with an online voting system affected over 50 municipalities, forcing many to extend voting hours for another 24 hours.

Dominion Voting released a statement Monday on Twitter blaming the issues on a server host, stating the slow traffic was “due to unauthorized action by a collocation provider supporting network connectivity, which should have supported limitless traffic but instead limited traffic for 90 minutes.”

They also said there were no security issues.

Although Dominion said the issue was resolved in 90 minutes, many voters still complained of problems. On Tuesday, the company had few other details.

“Our priority is ensuring that our Ontario municipal election customers are able to provide their voters with uninterrupted service until the end of voting,” Dominion Vice President Kay Stimson said.

One expert was skeptical about Dominion casting blame on a third-party subcontractor and said communities might never know for sure what really happened. As a rule, said Aleksander Essex, an assistant professor of software engineering at Western University, verifying the integrity of online votes is next to impossible.

“We’re left to just trust the vendor and the clerk that they did a good job, (but) why should you have to trust them?” Essex said. “It’s not a strong foundation for a democratic institution to be built off of a multinational, completely global infrastructure that is basically being run by business concerns and is completely non-transparent.”

Essex said the province “doesn’t track anything” and has little idea of what’s going on when it comes to electronic voting.

In a statement to CityNews, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs said it was aware of the issues some municipalities faced and that voting hours were extended due to technical difficulties.

They added the Municipal Elections Act is reviewed after each election and they “look forward to hearing from our municipal stakeholders and the public on where improvements may be needed.

A second online voting provider Intelivote Systems, which was plagued with similar problems in the 2010 municipal election, did not to have any issues on Monday night.

President Dean Smith said no problems were reported in any of the 99 municipalities using his system including Ajax, Hamilton, Markham and Sarnia.

When asked whether he believed this might deter other municipalities from switching to online voting, Smith said most people worry more about hacking, but he believes once residents hear the online voting problems were not caused by a system error or a denial of service attack, they will understand.

He added in both of the problems Intelivote experienced in 2010 and what he understands happened with Dominion Voting Monday night, the cast ballots weren’t compromised but rather the ability to vote on time.

In both situations, extended voting times remedied the issue.

In the municipalities forced to delay 24 hours, results are expected just after polls close at 8 p.m. Tuesday.