Fairvote Canada
What is This Group is About?
De Quoi Parle ce Groupe?
The unofficial non-partisan Lemmy movement to bring proportional representation to all levels of government in Canada.
🗳️Voters deserve more choice and accountability from all politicians.
Le mouvement non officiel et non partisan de Lemmy visant à introduire la représentation proportionnelle à tous les niveaux de gouvernement au Canada.
🗳️Les électeurs méritent davantage de choix et de responsabilité de la part de tous les politiciens.
- A Simple Guide to Electoral Systems
- What is First-Past-The-Post (FPTP)?
- What is Proportional Representation (PR)?
- What is a Citizens’ Assembly?
- Why Referendums Aren't Necessary
- The 219 Corrupt MPs Who Voted Against Advancing Electoral Reform
Related Communities/Communautés Associées
Resources/Ressources
Official Organizations/Organisations Officielles
- List of Canadian friends of Democracy Bluesky
- Fair Vote Canada: Bluesky
- Fair Voting BC: Bluesky
- Charter Challenge for Fair Voting: Bluesky
- Electoral Renewal Canada: Bluesky
- Vote16: Bluesky
- Longest Ballot Committee: Bluesky
- ~~Make Votes Equal / Make Seats Match Votes~~
- Ranked Ballot Initiative of Toronto (IRV for municipal elections)
We're looking for more moderators, especially those who are of French and indigenous identities.
Politiques de modération de contenu
Nous recherchons davantage de modérateurs, notamment ceux qui sont d'identité française et autochtone.
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I don't think we're quite there yet societally for Internet voting. There's enough claims of rigged elections already.
It's fundamentally a trust problem: the way it is right now, any idiot can witness the counting process and be confident it was all done properly. You can't do that with a computer, you have to trust that the computer does what it claims to do. It would probably lead to the same issue as with mail ballots as well, it would likely favor the left and the right would do everything to discredit the validity of it.
I'm sure clever people have a neat cryptographic scheme that I would fully trust, but apart from potential UX problems, it doesn't solve that probably none of my family would trust it even if I explained it to them. And I would understand them, given big tech is constantly invading our privacy, I would be skeptical too.
Paper ballots are tangible, anyone can see that people only put one ballot in the box, that nobody messes with the box or peak into the box (votes are supposed to be anonymous). People can see that the sealed boxes are moved and opened up then counted. The ballot pusher is silly but it also shows the attention to details to ensure the confidentiality and prevent any doubt that anything fishy happened.
I agree with your assessment. The transparency and verifiability of paper ballots is a fundamental strength of our current system that electronic voting can't easily replicate.
The trust issue you've highlighted is crucial. Paper ballots create a physical audit trail that can be manually recounted by ordinary citizens. With electronic systems, we'd need to trust not just the code (which most citizens can't verify), but also the entire chain of custody of both hardware and software. As you noted, even with sophisticated cryptographic solutions, the public trust element is essential for democratic legitimacy.
There are also serious security concerns. Electronic systems create "single points of failure" that paper ballots distributed across thousands of polling stations don't have. Computer scientists and security experts have consistently warned about these vulnerabilities. See:
While I'm passionate about modernizing our democracy, I believe the focus should be on fixing the mathematical problem at the core of our electoral system - where millions of valid votes simply don't count. Electronic voting might change how we collect votes but doesn't address this fundamental democratic deficit.
Paper ballots with proportional representation would give us both the security benefits you've described and ensure every vote counts toward representation. That seems like the right sequence of priorities for strengthening our democracy.
I'd like to start by saying that I agree with both of you guys.
However like, I remember listening to JRE back in the day (yes, I hate him and don't listen to him anymore) and he brought up electronic voting.
I'm paraphrasing his show but he brought up things like
I would really like to be able to just get a phone notification and "bing" vote, but yeah, there's so many issues with electronic voting like you said.
From what I read, it appears that the problem is:
It seems that a lot of decisions in Canada about voting, who can vote, where they can vote, riding size and shape, ... are to get the right outcome from elections.
Maybe after PR passes those will change, but who knows.