Paper ballot voting will be returning to Newmarket for the municipal election in 2022, after the town switched entirely to online and telephone voting for the last election in 2018.
At their meeting on Monday, council instructed town staff to come with a plan to allow residents who want to cast a paper ballot to do so while still promoting the online voting system as the primary way for most people to vote.
Although the feedback the municipality collected after the last election found that voters had been overwhelmingly satisfied with the new online and telephone voting systems, councillors said they had heard from constituents who said they would not be voting if they could not use a paper ballot.
One of those people was Tom Grimes, who said he and others had been effectively "disenfranchised" by the decision to move away from traditional voting. With council being asked to approve the use of online voting again in 2022 on Monday, Grimes argued forcefully at the meeting that paper ballots should return, at least as an option for those who can't use or don't trust online voting.
"I was quite angry when I was disenfranchised last election ... I have yet to see any rational arguments about why council decided to jump into online voting only, and eliminate paper voting," said Grimes.
"I would have thought council would look at ways to expand voting, not limit it. What is so wrong about allowing both paper and online voting? That way, there would be some voter preference, something we do not have now. One only has to look south of the border to see how contentious voter suppression has become."
Grimes said he didn't vote in the last election because he did not want to enter his personal information into an online voting system he feels is at risk of being hacked, pointing to last month's hacking of a Canada Revenue Agency system as an example.
"All computer systems are secure until they are not," he said.
Although councillors did end up agreeing that it would be best to bring back paper voting, there was pushback on the idea that the change to online voting had suppressed voter turnout.
Director of Legislative Services Lisa Lyons noted that while voter turnout in Newmarket in 2018 was 34.7 per cent, a decrease of 2.1 per cent from the previous election, it was in line with a decline in voter turnout across the province. There is no evidence, said Lyons, to suggest that a voting system change pushed the voting turnout either up or down.
Mayor John Taylor — who pointed out that he had called for a transition from paper ballots to online voting rather than a clean break — took a different view. If anything, said the mayor, online voting has helped more people cast their vote than it has hampered.
"Did some people get disenfranchised? Well, obviously, (Grimes) said he wouldn't vote if that was the method, and we all heard from people who said the same thing," said Taylor.
"But I also think there have many people who this has enfranchised. There are people with mobility challenges or difficult life circumstances who were able to vote, so I think we helped far more people get involved in the democratic process through the great work of our staff than the opposite."
During the last municipal election, 91 per cent of voters used the online voting system during the 10 days that voting was open, and feedback surveys found that 94 per cent of voters were satisfied with the new voting system, with 77 per cent "very satisfied."
Nonetheless, there was a consensus among councillors on Monday that having some kind of hybrid system where paper ballots would be an option was the right way to go. Even councillors such as Kelly Broom, who had supported the complete adoption of online voting, felt that way.
"Even though the system was well received, I think we should be looking at a hybrid model. I don't see that as going backwards, I see it as offering another way for people to cast their ballot and engage everyone in a way they feel comfortable voting."
Exactly how paper ballot voting will work during the next election remains to be seen. Lyons and her staff are now tasked with finding the best way to make it work.
What is clear at this point is that online voting will continue to be promoted as the main way for people to vote next year, with paper ballots meant for those who wish to opt out of the online system.
Paper ballot voting will likely be open for at least two days at just one or a few voting centres, said Lyons, perhaps at the Town of Newmarket offices.
Lyons said that the town should drop the telephone voting service in favour of paper ballots. This would be done for the sake of simplicity because only nine per cent of voters used it and it was the focus of the most complaints last time.
"If we put paper in place, we would be essentially running three different elections. We would have to test all three of those systems ahead of launching the election," said Lyons.
"So if we have paper as an alternative, I would recommend we (get rid of) the telephone and continue running the election with 10 days of consecutive online voting, with some form of paper option."
