this post was submitted on 21 Apr 2025
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Fairvote Canada

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The unofficial non-partisan Lemmy movement to bring proportional representation to all levels of government in Canada.

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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.

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Is Fairvote Canada only about PR? (question about modern urns and lowering voting age) (self.fairvote)
submitted 2 days ago by Nils to c/fairvote
12 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

There was an interesting thing during voting, someone noticed their ballot stuck on the urn slit, and asked for help.

They brought this “official” ballot pusher, it was like a long ruler they used to unclog the box. It got me thinking on how archaic is this method, and on the many ways that this can go wrong.

I found that Canada did some study on internet voting, but things are very slow. https://www.canada.ca/en/democratic-institutions/services/reports/online-voting-path-forward-federal-elections.html

News about voting technologies always bring up Estonia as a modern voting system. But it seems that other countries have been successful with electronic or internet voting for around 20 years too.

Another thing I saw is that some of those countries have the voting age down to 16 years. That makes sense to me, they have to live with those decisions longer than I. They can drive and join the army (with parents consent), voting should be added to their rights.

I could not find any organization in Canada taking care of those. And from what I read in the FairVote Canada website, it seems to cover only PR.

I ask it here because I am not sure where to ask, since those seem to make elections "fairer".

tl;dr;

Does Fairvote Canada only covers PR? Do they have any sister organization that would cover:

  • Electronic/internet voting?
  • lowering the voting age?

Thank you in advance.

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[–] lobut 3 points 1 day ago (2 children)

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

  • "if we bank online, how come we can't vote?"
  • "imagine how many more people would vote if you could just open your phone and do it"
  • "why can't we vote on proposals like we do on Reddit? with their discussions"

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.

[–] Nils 2 points 1 day ago

From what I read, it appears that the problem is:

imagine how many more people would vote if you could just open your phone and do it”

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.

[–] GreyEyedGhost 2 points 1 day ago

"if we bank online, how come we can't vote?"

There are two competing goals: traceability and anonymity. Banking has strong traceability and no anonymity. Having both is much harder than having one but not the other. Traceability is maintained until you put the ballot in the box, and the security of those boxes are maintained by multiple people. Banks also have traceability, by themselves and you, in part by removing anonymity - you can verify activity in your account. Anonymity is vital to maintain the integrity of the vote - if you can't prove who you voted for, your vote can't be easily sold or coerced out of you.

"imagine how many more people would vote if you could just open your phone and do it"

Sure, good point, simplicity would be nice, but part of the process is verifying who is voting and thay they aren't being coerced. Do you have any proposals for doing that remotely? I can't think of any.

"why can't we vote on proposals like we do on Reddit? with their discussions"

We can have discussions about votes like we are, right now. It would be nice if more people did, and more policies could be easily read by laymen so we could do this without intermediaries such as news sites. And how to turn that into direct democracy, where everyone gets a vote, anonymously and verified? See above.

I hope things trend this way in the future, but there are fundamental problems to solve before it can be safely done.