The company that dropped the ball during Woolwich’s first foray into electronic voting offered up an apology, but likely not enough information for the township to decide whether or not to continue down that path.
Woolwich, Wellesley and some 50 other municipalities saw online voting systems slow to a crawl late on election day, October 22, prompting the vote to be extended by 24 hours.
Appearing before council Tuesday night, Dominion Voting System’s representative Susan Yates attributed the problem to a third-party supplier of internet services.
Dominion had calculated it would need bandwidth of 100 to 200 megabits per second (mbps). To be sure, they increased that by a factor of five, to 1 gigabit per second, when arranging for bandwidth from its service provider, which has been under contract since 2010, she explained.
The company checked the level of service had been in place, and then verified that again during tests held while advance voting was going on.
When the system slowed down about 6 p.m. on voting day, Dominion discovered its service had been dropped down to 100 mbps. It took 90 minutes to restore full service.
“They didn’t provide what we had requested, unfortunately,” she said
While the system had bogged down, there were no issues with security, Yates stressed.
That prompted Coun. Larry Shantz to question the company’s process for ensuring the third-party service was up to snuff.
“Is there a way to test that the service is being provided … or do you take the word of the supplier?”
The key, he said, is to determine when did they cut the service back and who made the decision.
Coun. Patrick Merlihan was more direct in placing blame.
“It’s Dominion’s fault,” he maintained.
“What was your Plan B if things went awry?” he asked. “It seemed like you weren’t prepared for this situation.”
“I agree that we have to take responsibility,” replied Yates, noting customers such as Woolwich contract for services with Dominion, not with third-party suppliers, meaning the fault lies with Dominion.
In response, she said the company would look to gather supporting documents to show council what happened was not deliberate.
Shantz said he’d like to see the details and commensurate timelines.
Coun. Scott McMillan suggested the company look into its system redundancies – “a backup to your main plan” – to avoid a repeat of the situation.
Mayor Sandy Shantz noted the township will eventually need more information and assurances prior to making a decision on whether to stick with electronic voting in the 2022 election.
Preparations for the 2022 election, including a decision on whether to stick with electronic voting or revert to paper ballots, aren’t likely to be on the agenda for a couple of years, however.
Not discussed was the issue of compensation for the foul-up, which had direct financial costs, inconvenienced voters and cast something of a pall on electronic voting. The matter is likely to involve legal action, perhaps coordinated among the Ontario municipalities hit by the system slowdown on election day.
