Why an online voting system for YFS is a terrible idea

There’s been a dialogue about whether switching to an online voting system would be a better way forward for York Federation of Students elections.
To me, this is sort of like a debate on whether or not you should find a place to live by looking at pictures online and sending your first and last deposit by email transfer or by doing your research and then going in person to ensure you are getting what you’re paying for. Sure, the former is convenient and might save some time, but the risks are far too great for my liking.
We have seen far too many examples of elections going horribly wrong when online voting is employed, and these many instances of corruption give me doubts about the true integrity of the online elections.
The Western Gazette reported that in 2012, their university students’ council elections had been hacked by a former student, “who took advantage of a weakness in the site,” and that all 10,000 votes were invalidated, requiring a re-vote to be held two weeks later.
Similarly, in 2013, “poorly-timed human error lead to voters being presented with the wrong choices.”
At the University of British Columbia, in an online vote held in 2010, The Ubyssey reported that people were able to log in, clone the voting page, and submit fake ballots. This resulted in 731 ballots being submitted from a single IP address, alerting the elections committee that something was wrong.
Unsurprisingly, the votes were thrown out, but whoever received the extra 731 votes could have won if the flaw wasn’t discovered. And of course, students were a little angry at the system that allowed this to happen.
Recently, Queen’s University students saw their fall referendum postponed by a day because a miscommunication between the software behind their online voting system and their email server resulted in 6,000 email ballot logins not being sent out.
I think you see the trend here. The list goes on.
Let’s also acknowledge that in Canada, our federal, municipal and provincial elections operate on paper ballots.
The paper ballot voting system does not work at the touch of a button, but at least we know it’s a system that allows the integrity of the elections to stay intact.
At the end of the day, I like knowing I can have my space to vote without someone looming over my computer, that the candidates can’t hack in and vote for themselves 1,000 times over, and that people won’t be prevented from accessing the system due to glitches.
You can keep your “convenient” shortcut—I would much rather spend the time on ensuring quality.
Jenny Sellathurai
Contributor