FEBRUARY 4, 1997

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

COMPROMISE REACHED IN ELECTRONIC REFERENDA DEBATE

"It was interesting", said Tanya Quinn, a spokesperson for ORG. "The town debate with the members of 492ville really helped focus our attention on the differences and work out a compromise, one that I think ORG can live with."

"Agreed", said Jerry Han, also a spokesperson for ORG. "While we still have some misgivings over the technological issues, I think the compromises reached allow both sides the best of both worlds. Technological issues can always be corrected. Ensuring a fair social and political impact is much more important."

The system agreed upon by both parties involves using "telephone voting". Instead of binding referenda, the issues to be voted on would be structured as plebiscites, thus allowing the public to speak on an issue while giving the government the freedom to manoeuvre as required. In addition to plebiscites being called by the government, plebiscites could also originate from public initiatives. The system of official initiative registration and signing, as proposed in the original CDC position paper, would be implemented, with the restriction that the signing period of an initiative be limited to a certain number of days. This limitation would prevent excessive numbers of initiatives from accumulating and bogging down the initiative signing process. Besides plebiscites and initiatives, the voting system would also be used in regular elections. However, the public would not be able to recall elected officials electronically; they would still have to go through conventional channels.

To identify themselves to the automated voting system, voters would use the serial numbers on their citizenship cards, along with specially-issued Personal Identification Numbers (PINs). These PINs would be mailed out to all voters by Elections Canada before every election, and at no other time, except in the case of individuals forgetting their number. The PINs would be used during the election to vote for candidates, and would remain valid until immediately before the next election. Between elections, voters would use their PINs to vote on plebiscites and to sign public initiatives.

This revised system addresses many of the misgivings expressed by citizens at the town meeting. For example, there were concerns about giving unqualified people the ability to force the government to do their will, even if such action was detrimental to the whole in the long term. By making the results of the votes non-binding on the government, this issue is effectively resolved. Similarly, worries about possible security problems with the electronic voting system are partly assuaged in two ways. First, by only allowing telephone access to the system, the danger of computer break-in is avoided. Secondly, unlike social insurance numbers, citizenship numbers are not given to employers; thus the potential for security problems is reduced for PINs that have been misdirected via mail error or theft.

Having eliminated or reduced most major concerns with the electronic voting system, the ORG and CDC recommend a two-phase implementation process. The first phase would implement the system on a small scale, in several ridings distributed across the country, in time for the next federal elections. All facets of the proposed system would be studied throughout the registration and election process to determine its efficiency and large-scale viability. If all goes well, a recommendation would then be made to continue with the second phase: nation-wide implementation of the system. Unless significant problems were found, it is expected the second phase would be completed within twenty-four months after the next federal election.

Members of the CDC expressed their agreement with the compromise proposal. "It addresses the same fundamental problem we have always worried about," said Snow. "Plus, with the infrastructure there, it will be easy to extend in the future."

What remains to be seen is whether the federal government will respond to this new development. Said Cumbaa, "I'm eager to see their reaction, now that we [the CDC and ORG] have jointly proposed a plan of action."

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