Online Voting – Part 1: Implementation of Online Voting in Canadian Municipal Elections

Note: The standard designation and title for this NOI (originally published on January 12, 2021) was updated by the responsible SDO on December 10, 2024.

Note: CIO Strategy Council announced an organizational name change to the Digital Governance Council (DGC), effective January 30, 2023 and the creation of a new standards development division, Digital Governance Standards Institute (DGSI). This proposed series of standards aims to specify minimum technical requirements for online electoral voting in Canada at the municipal, provincial and federal level. Considerations are given to: • Thresholds to measure the security of online voting systems, including the security and privacy of voting data both in transit and in storage across the many devices and entities involved in the election (including voters, third party providers, vendors and election officials); • Documentation and processes for voter identity and authentication; • Documentation and processes for verification requirements; • Minimum requirements for the provisioning of network and computational resources and capacity; • Logic/accuracy discovery, documentation and processes of the testing and auditability of systems, including clear parameters regarding when they must be audited and by whom, and how much detail of the system must be made public; • Documentation and processes regarding access to the voting systems and voter and election information. This includes parameters regarding who has access to different parts of the system (e.g. government officials and bodies) and control over making system changes as well as defining the role of vendors and their level of access to voter and ballot information; • Protocols and processes to protect the secrecy of the vote to ensure that cast votes cannot be traced back to individual voters, defining who has privileged access to what information and what technical privacy guarantees are required; • Documentation and processes surrounding ballot design, including measures for ensuring that ballots display consistently across operating systems, devices, and browsers; • Clear and defined documentation of accessibility requirements to ensure that all voters are able to cast a vote using the online voting technology; • Establishing procedures to clarify the role of candidates and scrutineers in the online voting process, including when and how the system is demonstrated to them and their role in the tabulation and verification of results. As part of the technical solution the practice of scrutineering must have meaning and soundness.