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Needlepoint Class
By Chuck Poulsen
Whenever I want to know what’s new with advancements in representative democracy, I check in on Estonia.
Wait a minute, let’s see if I can find Estonia on a map. There it is, just north of Latvia and a boat ride south of Finland.
More on Estonia, which leads the world in Internet voting, in a moment.
Canadians have been wringing their hands over low voter turnouts. The Nov. 28 Kelowna by-election may break the previous record low turnout of 14 per cent that was recorded in 1984 when Norm Fix was elected from a field of six contenders. There are 15 candidates this time, enough to scare a lot of people away from trying to figure which one they want.
I like low voter turnouts. The lower the turnout, the more power my individual vote has. Coercing people to vote with fines or rewards just dilutes the pool of knowledgeable voters.
We already have a diluted pool of candidates with common sense.
Candidate Matthew Reed, apparently with nothing else to do, recently attacked fellow candidate Kevin Craig.
You already know of the lurid and shocking accusations so I will just sum up:
Reed said Craig had bribed people with free hot chocolate and hot dogs at Craig’s rally.
Craig said: “Did not, did not.”
Reed said: “Did too, did too.”
The closest Kelowna comes to inspired rhetoric and rousing debate is about free junk food.
I would not sell my vote for a cup of hot chocolate or a wiener. A good bottle of single malt scotch, maybe. Even John A. Macdonald would understand that.
The headline on that story stated that the “gloves are off” in the municipal campaign. I think the headline might have read: “Mittens are off.”
Back to Estonia, which is much more interesting.
In 2007, Estonia became the world’s first country to allow voters in a national parliamentary election to cast their ballots over the Internet. Municipal Internet voting had begun two years earlier.
In 2005, the turnout of Internet voters in municipal elections was one per cent. This year, it had grown to 10 per cent. Slightly more men than women use e-voting. The largest age group is voters 25-34 years old.
To vote, Estonians put their identification card, which has an electronic chip on it, into a reader attached to their computer and then enter two passwords. The readers sell for about $15 Cdn. More than one million chip-enabled ID cards have been issued in the country of 1.3 million people.
The votes are encrypted for security and opened by the national election committee using a “private key” on election day.
“I will be voting in these elections via Internet,” said Estonian Toomas Talts in a New York Times article.
“It is a good system and I think my grandfather, who is over 80, will be doing the same.“
We do so many things on the Internet now it seems obvious that e-voting would raise the turnout. Obvious to all except our afraid-of-change politicians.
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A growing number of airlines, including WestJet and Air Canada, have started charging for the extra leg room in bulkhead and emergency exit aisle seats.
The bulkhead seats are often used by passengers flying with babies because there are provisions for the baby to sleep, making it much nicer for the kid as well as other passengers.
You have to wonder about companies that decide to make life tougher on new mothers and babies trying to negotiate frustrations of air travel.
Just as bad is the charge on the emergency aisle seats. Passengers in those seats are expected to open and throw the emergency door away from the plane in case of a crash.
The airlines should be paying those people for the potential service and hazard, not charging them.
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Well it is not that simple.
I really could care less about the food.
I care because someone was breaking a rule in the Local Government Act, was told, and to my interpretation continued to break the rule.
It is all a personal perception and how much “bending” of the rule of law that you personally feel is acceptable in society.
Campaign law should not be bent or spun.
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Voter turnout, and youth turnout, would be awesome if there was electronic voting. My wife add I were talking about this a few months ago and we both thought that a voting via mobile phones would be great.
Let’s say when buy mobile phone your phone number would be given and ID to your name, so if you buy another phone you do net get 2 votes. Then your off to vote.
If we have online banking and all that other financial stuff on the internet, so why not voting as well? It would change the demographics of voting overnight.
In doing so it would revolutionize the way we do politics.
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Kelowna City Council could have taken steps to improve voter turnout by putting a referendum item on the ballot e.g., on the downtown CD Zone, but they were too fearful of real democracy taking place here to allow that to happen. I was at the meeting where Councillors Blanleil, Hobson and James smugly said that THEY were elected to make decisions, and that they didn’t like referendums. If a new low is set in voter turnout in this by-election, Kelowna residents should remember their names.
Please continue discussion on the forum: link