Dear Editor

Recently, I have been approached about the move, by municipalities, to implement internet voting. People should be out-raged and it would seem they are.

People want paper ballots with polling stations and there is nothing in the Municipal Act or the Municipal Elections Act that forces Municipalities to implement this form of voting. It states they MAY but not that they SHALL implement this form of voting. It is also a form of discrimination and removes people's constitutional right to vote.

Why do I say this, you might ask? One merely has to go to Stats Can to find the answer. As of the release of this information, by Stats Can in 2013, approximately 20% of households, in Canada, do not have computers nor access to the internet. There is also the question as to whether people want to use computers and/or the internet. From Stats Canada, it states:

"About 85% of households located in census metropolitan areas and 80% of households located in census agglomerations had home Internet access, compared with 75% of households outside these areas.

Almost all households in the top income quartile (98%), or those with household incomes of $94,000 or more, had home Internet access, compared with 58% of households in the lowest income quartile, or those with household incomes of $30,000 or less.

Of those households that did not have home Internet access in 2012, 61% reported they had no need for or interest in it. About 20% of households reported having no access because of the cost of the service or equipment."

Questions – is this not discriminating against the voting public?

Is this not the removal of one's constitutional right to vote?

Is this not merely the bureaucracy forcing people to do the work that the staff is to do?

And what about voter turnout – time and again we hear there is very low voter turnout – is this not going to exacerbate the situation?

What ever happened to the bureaucracy working for the people instead of the other way around? Perhaps, in light of this information, municipal councils want a biased voting system so that those with less money cannot exercise their rights? And if Municipal Councils don't want a biased voting system, perhaps they should get their staff under control and stop this abuse of power, particularly in the rural areas, because these are the areas less likely to have access to both computers and/or the internet, wouldn't one agree?

Elizabeth F. Marshall,
Trillium Party of Ontario, Bruce-Grey-Owen Sound