Will electronic voting help?



No. It will just make things worse.

Voting by e-mail or by an electronic counting program accessed by a computer, ipad or a smartphone just replaces paper proxies by electrons. It does not get the voters together in a room to listen to and participate in the democratic process. The opposite, it encourages people to remain uninformed and disinterested.

Why the hype?
Our politicians want to juice the voting participation as the turnout in municipal, provincial and federal elections is falling. Electronic balloting promises to fix that problem by making voting fast and convenient.

The condo industry and the condo boards want to be able to get enough owners voting so they can make quorum. Changes to the declaration is almost impossible to achieve and so is the far lower bar needed to make changes to the by-laws. Some condos cannot even make quorum to hold their AGMs.

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