Warner demonstrates need for online voting

At the January 10 board meeting, the UVSS board was presented with a proposal that would see it use UVic’s Webvote system for this election period. During the debate, some board members pointed out that the paper ballot system that was currently in place was not secure. Last year Shawn Slavin demonstrated how easy it was for him to acquire a second ballot in that election.

Despite this fact, the board narrowly rejected the use of UVic’s Webvote system. You can read all about the arguments made both for and against this system here: http://uvssuncovered.blogspot.com/2011/01/board-rejects-online-voting.html

Following this, no attempts or initiatives were undertaken to make any improvements to the security of the paper ballot system. Board members that rejected online voting appeared content hold an election using a paper ballot system that they knew was easy to cast multiple ballots under.

Following this rejecting of using UVic’s Webvote system, Director at Large Nathan Warner was determined to demonstrate just how flawed the UVSS paper ballot system really is.


How to stuff a UVSS ballot box 101

Nathan Warner began to “lose” the sticker on his student card a few times a week in the lead up to the UVSS elections. The sticker on student cards is the method by which the current paper ballot system is supposed to ensure students only vote once.

In this election, poll sitters scratched off the letter “D” on the sticker to indicate the student had voted. By simply removing a scratched sticker and replacing it with a new one, a student can vote multiple times in an election. By the time the election occurred, Warner had acquired over a dozen of these stickers.

Four of the more than a dozen stickers Director at Large Nathan Warner stock piled in the lead up to the UVSS election.

Warner didn’t just duplicate the method Shawn Slavin used last election to vote multiple times; he went a step further.

When Warner went to cast his first set of ballots on Wednesday morning, he did not put all his ballots into the ballot box. Instead, he kept the Executive Directors ballot and walked away with it.

He took this ballot and proceeded to recreate the ballot in Microsoft Word. Within 20 minutes, he had created a ballot that was nearly identical to the real thing. Warner had little difficulty finding identical yellow paper to what the real ballot had been created with and printed out a number of copies. He then cut out these counterfeit ballots.

In just a matter of minutes, dozens of counterfeit UVSS ballots can be created. If placed amongst hundreds of legitimate ballots in a ballot box, no ballot counter or scrutineer would spot that these ballots were fake.

On Thursday Warner, voted three times at polling stations around campus. With each set of ballots he placed in a ballot box, he also included a few of his counterfeit ballots as well. While the electoral office likely could have been able to catch the fact that the number of ballots in the ballot box did not match the number cast at that polling station, there is no way to determine which particular ballots are the ones “stuffing” the ballot box, nor which candidates are receiving the extra votes.

It is important to note that Warner was out to make a point and had no intentions of affecting the results of the elections. Warner claims to have spoiled every one of his ballots (with the exception of the first legitimate set of ballots he cast on Wednesday morning) by writing his name on them.

On Thursday evening, Warner explained what he had done to the electoral office. One of his motivations for doing this was his concern that someone else could have done the same thing as himself, but with intent to influence the results of the election.


Conclusion

This demonstration by Nathan Warner makes it incredibly obvious that the UVSS needs to do away with paper ballots once and for all. In fact, it was incredibly obvious a year ago, if not sooner than that. Yesterday UVic Underground made a post titled “There’s good reason for the paper ballot.” No, there is absolutely no good reason.

For members of the UVSS board to allow this election to occur under a system they know is flawed is simply irresponsible. I strongly believe that board members voted on January 10 based on which system they felt gave themselves or those they supported the best chance to be successful in this election, not based on what was the most fair, secure and accessible system for the UVSS.

The UVSS first began investigating online voting in 2001 following the creation of UVic’s Webvote system. The UVic Webvote system has been used for a decade for voting in Senate and Board of Governor’s elections as well as over other smaller votes as UVic. During this time there have been no known instances of fraud with this system. Knowing the UVSS was considering the use of its Webvote system, UVic had a third party conduct a security audit to confirm the Webvote system is secure.

The recent push to move the UVSS elections online has been occurring since at least 2009. Unfortunately foot dragging by board members, resistance to change and conflicts of interest have prevented the system from being implemented thus far. Hopefully the actions of Nathan Warner can be the catalyst to ensure UVSS elections finally move online for 2012.

When the results become known this evening, I can only hope that there is no evidence of multiple voting and ballot box stuffing beyond that done by Nathan Warner and for there to be significant margins separating candidates. As it only takes a couple of extra ballots to change the results of some races, it would be extremely unfortunately for the UVSS to find itself in yet another election controversy.

If and when the actual number of ballots spoiled by Nathan Warner is known, this post will be updated.