After a couple of weeks off, city council got back to business with the May edition of Committee of the Whole, and boy was there business! There was one big item on the agenda this week, and it was bound to be controversial, but it was the culmination of about 18 months of work and advocacy at one of Guelph’s local boards. Yes, internet voting is back on the menu, and this is how we got there…
Committee of the Whole Meeting – May 7
Sure, there were some closed meeting items, a lot of staff recognitions, and authorization to sign the Declaration of Compliance for the Ontario Health Multi-Sector Service Accountability Agreement, but we know why all eyes were on Committee of the Whole this week (month?): 2026 Municipal Election Alternative Voting Methods and Accessible Voting Service Enhancements.
More specifically though, we’re talking about online voting.
The presentation was kind of set up like a “He Said, She Said”, with City Clerk Stephen O’Brien leading the staff presentation and explaining why staff don’t want to pursue internet voting, while Accessibility Advisory Committee Chair Lorelei Root laid out why her committee could not support the staff recommendation without an online option. For the record, the staff recommendation had tabulators for in-person voting, mail-in voting, vote-from-home, and a direction to offer free Transit and free parking in Market Parkade on Election Day.
Deputy Clerk Jennifer Slater, who’s also Manager of Information, Privacy and Elections, said that the options pursued by staff must uphold standards of reliability and dependability while maintaining the demands required of the Municipal Elections Act. The methods are also tested for safety, viability, and risk, which is hard to do considering the small number of vendors that offer an internet option and now there are two less available; one is Dominion, who’s pulled out of internet voting entirely, and the other is now entering insolvency. O’Brien also said it would be ideal if there were some kind of internet voting standards in the province, and while that’s in progress right now, it might not be ready by 2026
Root spoke from a sense of frustration, she’s been personally been fighting for a decade to get internet voting back because 2014 was the first and only time that she was able to vote in an election independently. She said that the technical risks were not as grave as staff were making them out to be (speaking as someone who works in digital security), and that the human rights violation of the City not offering people with disabilities the ability to vote safely and with independence should be a more immediate concern. She also added that you can interfere with election methods that are not online, and it’s a form of privilege to talk about security concerns around internet voting and not, say, the possibility of someone dumping green dye on ballots like what happened in Russia earlier this year.
With so much information, Corporate Services Chair Leanne Caron let the committee ask questions before delegations. Members wanted to explore staff’s technical concerns when half of Ontario’s municipalities now have internet voting, and the mechanisms for doing a recount, which staff raised as another concern with an internet option. There were also questions about the reliability of mail-in ballots in the 2022 election; apparently 593 ballot kits were sent out by mail, and while 464 were received in time to be counted, 54 were received after the deadline and were not counted.
When committee finally got to the delegates, things were evenly split between two people in favour of an internet voting option and two people who were against it. The two people against were council frequent fliers Susan Watson and Lin Grist who expressed election security concerns, and the two people in favour were current or former members of the AAC. Long-time local disability activist Brad Howcroft said that people with disabilities have always wanted to be treated equally in Guelph, but they keep hitting a wall with some City services, including voting.
After a break, the original three recommendations were put on the floor, and Councillor Erin Caton, herself a disability advocate, proposed an additional motion to offer internet voting for 2026 “subject to all security requirements and testing meeting the satisfaction of the City Clerk.” Caton said that every disabled person knows about their own accessibility needs so we should be listening to them. She also said that we can’t let fear of technology and hypotheticals stop us from addressing human rights issues.
With internet voting back on the table, Councillor Cathy Downer proposed that they should take mail-in ballots out of the recommendation. She said that she was actually surprised that mail-in didn’t rank higher in terms of security concerns because the City can’t control Canada Post, and the fact that almost 10 per cent of the ballots weren’t received on time to be counted in 2022. The amendment ended up failing in a narrow 6-7 vote.
As for internet voting, some councillors asked the clerks about what would happen if they couldn’t find a vendor that meets their high standards, and O’Brien explained that this would have to come back to council for a new bylaw since council directs staff what voting methods to use. Caron, more than once, pointed out to the committee members that their job is to direct staff about what options they want, and then it’s up to staff to take care of the logistics.
Ultimately it seemed like access had won in the hearts and minds of the majority of council, but there were still some skeptics. Caton’s motion was adapted in a vote of 9-4 with Councillors Allt, Busuttil, O’Rourke and Richardson voting against. The slate of voting options was ultimately passed by council, including mail-in ballots, but these directions will still have to ratified at the regular meeting at the end of the month.
Click here to see the complete recap of the meeting.
Guelph Politico 