But it should have been a test run , not a live show with real world consequences.

And they should have fallen back on the old pen and paper stuff the moment this experiment obviously failed. They have a responsibility as the second place party in Canada who could potentially become the government at the drop of a hat not to allow such games to influence them. And they blew it.

That being said, maybe we need to balance the benefits of greater participation with a less secure, less private, system. In a traditional party convention, only the actual floor delegates have the power to influence ballots on the day. E-voting increased participation from roughly 4300 conventioneers to 65 000 members, on each ballot – that is an accomplishment.

I liken the DDoS attack on the NDP online voting system to the Robocall scandal. People were delayed, distracted but could still vote, and in this case the security of the database was not compromised (as far as we know).

E-voting is not a panacea to the continuing overall drop in voter participation – at all levels: Federal, Provincial, Municipal and at the party level numbers of votes cast are steadily declining. Brave experimentation is required to reverse the trend, and maybe e-voting, while certainly problematic, will provide more interest in the political democratic process.

Mat