Next Monday, October 21 is the day of the Canadian federal election. On this day, millions of Canadians will be asked to choose who they think is best to lead their country in tackling all sorts of very important issues. The environment and climate change. Energy. Education. Indigenous and minority rights.
There's a lot of things to consider as we think about the future. But whether a person chooses Justin Trudeau, Andrew Scheer, Jagmeet Singh, Elizabeth May, or Maxime Bernier, they will be making that future-minded choice with a very old-school system.
Paper voting.
This doesn't compute
Paper voting? Come on! Surely we have figured out how to use computers to collect people's votes — and we can do it far more efficiently this way than with paper, too. And the truth is, we have and we can. But can we do it more securely?
In today's OWLconnected General KnOWLedge, we look at the advantages of paper over computers in an election. And why over the last few years, more, not less, countries are sticking with paper.
Think they should modify electronic voting machines so that they’re harder to hack?
😕
Paper can’t be hacked, and it’ll remain the best system forever, unless… people figure out how to hack paper, which isn’t likely or possible.
I’ll keep that in mind when I turn 18