…but first, a word from The Incline

Please enjoy an early edition of The Incline! I wanted to get this one out today since council will be voting on the recommendations from last week’s Audit, Finance, and Administration committee meeting regarding online voting. I hope this little look into the debate over online voting - and the political theatre that occurred at last week’s committee meeting - will provide some much-needed context as we go into today’s council meeting.

This is also to make up for not having an edition come out last week. Summer is simultaneously a time to relax and a time to get as much done as possible, and I’ve been trying to do both (mostly doing the latter…so much of the latter).

Again, just a reminder that an edition might not come out every single week in the summer, but I’ll do my best to publish as issues arise. Nominations for the Ward 8 by-election close in around three weeks, we’re getting close to the city revealing the final HSR Next plan, and the Ontario Civilian Police Commission agreed with Councillor Cameron Kroetsch that the Hamilton Police Services Board had “a number of deficiencies” when reviewing the 2024 Hamilton Police budget. So there’s lots happening in Hamilton this summer! You’d think we’d all be taking it easy in this heat, but things seem to be bouncing along.

Okay, on with the newsletter!

Together in Electric Democracy

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Back in 2016, during the 42nd Canadian Parliament, the Standing Committee on Electoral Reform produced a report. That report - Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Process, and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform - offered little of substance, waffling between options for reform and making recommendations that would only slightly change the way we as Canadians cast ballots.

Should we adopt a proportional system? The authors of the report threw up their hands and offered a loud “meh” in response, saying that, even if proportional systems are more representative, “they should not be considered by the Government as such systems sever the connection between voters and their MP.” Oh, yeah, so important. Everyone definitely knows who their MP is and there aren’t any ways to address that issue in a proportional system (he said, sarcastically). Should we have mandatory voting? We get another “meh” from the authors, who acknowledged that it’s extremely effective and would draw more people into the political conversation, but “The Committee recommends that mandatory voting not be implemented at this time.” Indeed, the boldest thing the report even suggested was that financial incentives be offered to political parties to encourage them to run more women-identified candidates. Overall, the report spent a long time studying a very important issue, only to turn around and make no meaningful suggestions for substantive reform.

But the report spent a whole chapter diving into the idea of online voting. Chapter 6 details the committee’s work on the matter, given the country’s immense size, the benefit of online options for people with disabilities, and how online we all already are in our everyday lives.

The committee conducted e-consultations with over 22,000 Canadians, asking their opinion on online voting. The result was somewhat split. 46.6% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that we should be allowed to vote online in federal elections while 34.1% disagreed or strongly disagreed. 11.5% of respondents were neutral and 7.8% had no opinion. While more supported the idea than opposed, it wasn’t a clear majority in favour and a fair number of people strongly opposed the notion.

The perspectives they heard from Canadians were equally mixed. A representative from the Canadian Institute for the Blind told the committee that they have never been able to independently cast a ballot, which would only be possible under some kind of electronic option. A resident of Whitehorse, on the other hand, noted that he, and many northerners, have unreliable internet access, which may prevent them from participating in the same way southerners do. Some experts said online voting would make the counting process less transparent while others said the application of open-source software in online voting would make the process more transparent by giving people ways to verify what polling workers are doing.

But, in the same round of e-consultation, the committee asked participants about their feelings on the security of online voting. In this, there was a clear response. 68.8% of respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “I am concerned about the security and reliability of online voting.” Dr. Barbara Simons, the head of the US-based non-partisan Verified Voting Foundation - a group that provides impartial expert opinions on safe and transparent voting systems - told the committee “If there is even a small chance that Internet voting might result in our elections being hacked, it doesn't matter how many people want it. If Internet voting puts our elections at risk - and it does - we must reject it until such time as it can be proven secure.”¹

The committee ultimately recommended “that online voting not be implemented at this time.” That was almost a decade ago, and there has been no move to implement online voting at the federal level since.

***

Here in Ontario, our municipalities jumped on the online voting bandwagon a long, long time ago. Markham shifted to online voting in 2003, with the town clerk noting “A large number of voters want to vote at their own convenience, 24 hours a day, from home or wherever they can connect to the Internet.” The city saw a massive surge in voter registrations, though only 17% of voters bothered to use the online option.²

After that election, voter turnout began to increase, rising steadily from 2006 to 2018. Only in the last election did turnout decline slightly, blamed on a host of issues from “voter apathy, non-stop elections, and even Diwali”.³ The correlation between online voting and increased turnout has not been proven; some of the social and demographic changes in Markham are likely better explanations of why turnout increased.

Still, 217 municipalities in Ontario - nearly 48.9% - offer some form of online voting. A combination of internet and telephone voting (common in small rural municipalities across the province) overtook simple paper ballots as the most used option in the province’s 2022 local elections, with the number of municipalities using the traditional method declining from 146 to just 98.

One nearby municipality that offered online voting in 2022 was Thorold. They opted to conduct advance polling online while keeping election day as an in-person event. That was all part of a pilot project to determine the community’s interest in online voting and was overseen by the city’s then-clerk, Matthew Trennum. Despite the new option, voter turnout in Thorold dropped dramatically, from 36% in 2018 to under 25% in 2022. It’s important to note there was an overall, province-wide massive decline in turnout as well, which has been attributed to the Ford government’s meddling in local affairs, the fact that Canadians went to the polls three times in the span of a year, and the lingering impacts of the pandemic. But even with hiccups in the roll out and the low turnout, nearly 41% of people who did vote in Thorold opted to do so online, leading to a 5-4 vote from Thorold’s council in favour of offering online voting in 2026.⁴

Trennum left Thorold in July of 2024 to become Hamilton’s City Clerk. One of his first responsibilities was overseeing the January 2025 Ward 4 Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) trustee by-election - the first in Hamilton to ever offer online voting. In that election, which featured dismal turnout, around 45% of people who cast ballots did so online, using a system designed by Toronto-based election management company Neuvote. It was a trustee by-election, held in January, and in a ward where the incumbent trustee had served for decades, so turnout was never going to be high, but it did show that, if the option is there, people will vote online.

That experiment set the stage for the recommendation that came to council’s Audit, Finance, and Administration (AF&A) committee on July 10. That recommendation would have seen City of Hamilton use Neuvote’s program to offer an online voting option to all Hamiltonians in our next municipal election on October 26, 2026.

“Would have” being the key phrase there.

Delegating to AF&A: A Hamilton Fringe Festival Performance

At city hall, agendas are posted about a week in advance of a meeting. For the July 10 AF&A meeting, the agenda was posted on July 3. That day, at 4:36 PM, local independent journalist Joey Coleman posted a screengrab of the first couple of pages of the report on online voting to Bluesky with the caption:

“Hamilton City Council will vote next Thursday on a staff recommendation to add online voting for the 2026 municipal election. Anon-competitive sole-source $850,000 contract. Note: vote is at Audit Finance and Administration Committee not GIC. #yhmcc #HamOnt”

I believe Coleman meant “a non-competitive sole-source” contract, as the company - Neuvote - was listed in the report and was not anonymous. Regardless, his post on the matter attracted the attention of the ungainly coalition of anti-online voting activists in the city.

Those opposed to online voting represent an eclectic cross section of Hamilton’s politically-active residents. People on the progressive side of the spectrum, moderates without strong opinions on many other matters, and the city’s well-funded and highly organized band of right-wing populists all seem to share a distrust of online voting, creating a cross-partisan mélange of opposition.

One of the most visible figures leading the charge against online voting has been Mark Coakley, the west Hamilton-based author and activist. A significant amount of Coakley’s online presence for the past year has been devoted to the campaign against online voting, curating a host of articles and blog posts from around the world highlighting very real concerns around the security and accessibility failings of online voting. Coakley’s concerns on social media are regularly backed up by the pseudonymous account “Hamilton Is Home” which, from its appearance on Bluesky eight months ago, has focused almost exclusively on opposing online voting. That account went so far as to call for a “boycott” of the Ward 4 trustee by-election because of the “insecure online vote”.

As there have been instances of miscommunication in the past, I want to be abundantly clear that I present this information as an account of what has transpired without making a judgement about Coakley or “Hamilton Is Home’s” advocacy on the matter, though I can say that I strongly oppose the idea of boycotting a trustee by-election because of fears about online security. Both Coakley and “Hamilton Is Home” have raised some legitimate concerns that, by available polling and research on the issue of online voting, are shared by many Canadians. Indeed, their advocacy on the matter predates many of the more vocal members of the community who have gleaned onto this issue as a matter of political expediency.

It is those people on whom I’d like to focus for a minute.

Coleman’s post came at 4:36 PM on July 3, 2025. At 6:27 PM on July 3, 2025, AF&A received a delegation request from habitual delegate and prospective city council candidate (likely in Ward 3, but his ongoing fixation on Ward 2’s Cameron Kroetsch suggests either the political novice is keeping his options open or he knows that picking on Kroetsch online gets lots of engagement) Andrew Selman. A few days later, local landlord and Conservative Party-affiliated megadonor Peter Dyakowski also submitted a request to delegate. The city’s right-wing populists had, evidently, found a new foe against which they could crusade, ensuring their perpetual rage machine’s momentum could continue unimpeded.

***

The Selman and Dyakowski show kicked off AF&A, taking up over 50 minutes of the committee’s time right from the onset.

Selman’s presentation opened with a critique of the “sole source” contract being offered to Neuvote. But then he goes wide, reading snippets directly from the staff report on the matter. He takes issue with a line in the report that reads: “There may be cost savings found as a result of online voting by reducing the need for as many staff and polling locations on election day.” Selman latches onto this, telling the committee, “So think about what that really means. It’s about closing polling places - the very spaces where thousands of Hamiltonians show up, proudly, to mark a ballot with their own hand. Some bring their kids. Some bring their parents. For many, it’s not just a right; it’s a solemn tradition.”

It’s simple, it’s populist, it’s giving “Norman Rockwell reads from the syllabus for an introductory civics class from 1952”.

Selman’s messaging is getting tighter. He’s confident in front of council. He has a self-assured cockiness that could play well with a nostalgic segment of the population, eager to return to the glory days when people like Sam Merulla and Bernie Morelli and Henry Merling ran this town and eggs were $0.80 and a hardworking family man could get by with a little gumption and grit! He has the aggression of a Jason Farr and the overwhelming confidence of a Tom Jackson. But he still lacks the relatable charm needed to really connect with the electorate. More on that later. For now, back to his presentation.

“And now we’re being told that system needs fixing,” he continues, “Is the current system perfect? No. But it does work. It’s trusted, it’s transparent.” He drills into the message, telling council that, once again, our municipal institutions are leaving the little guy behind in favour of pursuing “bureaucracy in a rush.”

“If this contract is about increasing turnout, where’s the evidence? Where’s the outreach? Where’s the research? Where’s the debate? If it’s about cost savings, where’s the analysis? Because, right now, what we’re being given is a sales pitch,” he says, the irony evidently lost on the aspiring councillor.

This continues on for a long time, as Selman does his own, tighter take on a standard Republican-style stump speech. He trots out old faves like the “microshelter fiasco”, “rubber stamped” procurements, referencing a security error made by the city which exposed his home address and phone number to “unknown individuals”. We were one “Sleepy Joe” reference away from him becoming a write-in candidate for some congressional district in Ohio.

His contention near the end is that online elections are not secure. “We could look back to 2018. As reported in Thorold Today, over 50 municipalities contracted Dominion Voting to run their online elections. And, on election night, that system crashed.”

Selman is somewhat correct on this point. Yes, in 2018, the Dominion Voting Systems online platform crashed, but that was due to a server error on the part of Dominion. The municipalities extended the voting period and everything worked out.

Keen observers might remember Dominion as one of the central players in the QAnon-led conspiracy theory that the 2020 US Presidential election was “stolen”. The conspiracy theorists made up lies about the company being “hacked” to ensure the victory of former President Biden, spreading them repeatedly during Biden’s uneventful interregnum. Dominion has spent the better part of 5 years in various courts around the United States suing the propagators of these lies for millions in damages.

But Dominion is important to the motion on which Selman is delegating as well. The city’s report on online voting wasn’t the only thing on the agenda. The report actually made a series of recommendations, including to offer another sole-source contract to lease “optical scanning vote tabulators” (or “OSV” tabulators) for the paper ballot side of our 2026 elections from Dominion. Because, remember, Hamiltonians don’t “mark an X” when we go to vote; we fill in a bubble that’s then run through a machine to be counted. Those OSV tabulators read the bubble and count it, allowing for the speedy processing of votes along with the collection of ballots for human verification later.

When it’s time for questions, Ward 4’s Tammy Hwang is first up, asking Selman if he knew that the Ward 4 HWDSB trustee by-election was run with an online component. Selman answers “Yes” before trying to ask Hwang a question of his own. AF&A’s chair, Ward 14’s Mike Spadafora jumps in to shut down what he calls “an exchange”, before Hwang is about to return to her questions.

“What do you know about the Dominion tabulators?” she asks. There’s a pause before she continues: “What was it that caused you to say that…you made the correlation directly that it was Dominion that was doing all of the online [voting]?”

“I did not,” Selman responds.

“Okay, I just wanted to get some clarity on that because I got confused…I thought Dominion was just [providing] the tabulating machines that are part of the election process…”

It seems to be a genuine miscommunication there. Selman was referencing how Dominion’s online voting software failed in 2018, but Dominion would only be providing the tabulators in 2026. But Selman tries to clarify: “Obviously Neuvote is the other component we have here in Hamilton, Ontario,” he says. But then, he throws in this tidbit.

“What I can tell you is that both of those systems…we, around this horseshoe, have no manner to independently verify the actual result.”

Oh. We around the council horseshoe, eh? Someone’s jumping the gun a little, but fine.

This seems to be the thing Selman and many of online voting’s opponents have fixated on. With the OSV readers we use for paper ballot elections, the machine does a quick count, but the ballots still exist to allow for an in-person count to verify the result. With online voting, you make a selection and that selection is registered on a server. You don’t have the ability to verify that votes cast for a particular candidate were actually allocated to that candidate like you do with a paper ballot. It’s a fair critique, even if proponents of online voting say there are ample safeguards in place to prevent any kind of fraud.

Hwang and Selman go back and forth for a while. Hwang says she’ll ask staff about the verification issue, to which Selman says he’s upset that those questions weren’t asked “before the train left the station.” The meeting they’re in is, of course, the exact time to ask questions of a report that’s just come across their desk. His timing is a little muddled, his focus is a little blurry. The train hasn’t even departed yet, but he’s acting like they’re already rolling out the snack cart and verifying tickets.

Hwang says that Neuvote came to Ward 4 prior to the trustee by-election to let people know about their system. Selman butts in, saying it was little more than “a sales pitch”.

Spadafora chastises the frequent delegate for interrupting the councillor a third time. Selman is up to his usual bullish antics of talking over, debating, and goading councillors so he can get the clips he needs for his campaign. While he fights with many members of council, his interruptions and outbursts during his interaction with Hwang don’t seem to happen when, later, he’s responding to Ward 10 councillor Jeff Beattie. Do with that information what you will.

“‘preciate that,” Selman responds every time he’s scolded, providing no evidence that he’ll stop anytime soon. Spadafora does little to stop the eager candidate-to-be other than put on his best dad voice and absent-mindedly pick his ears once Hwang resumes speaking.

Hwang tries to understand Selman’s concern over timing. “Having this as agenda item 8.4 is not enough information for you? Staff will be doing a presentation at that time, and they’ll also be sharing the results and the thought process in which this has moved forward. So that’s not enough information for you?”

“No,” Selman responds. “I’ve spoken to independent experts in this space,” he says, referencing an email exchange he had with a professor of software engineering at Western University in the days before the AF&A meeting. “Frankly, I don’t believe city staff have the capabilities to make that call,” he says, referencing a determination that the voting system proposed would be “secure”.

Ahh, already attacking city staff.

The Sword of Whitehead shudders to life upon hearing this attack, knowing a new hand awaits and that its long slumber may soon be over - a slumber that began when Danko threw it down, proclaiming proudly “I don’t want to play with you anymore!”

Next up to question Selman is Beattie, who announces that, thanks in part to Selman’s advocacy, he’s lost faith in online voting. So, obviously, Beattie doesn’t actually ask a question, instead giving Selman a platform from which he can repeat his claims.

Hwang is the only person willing to seek deeper answers to Selman’s claims, so after the speaker’s list is exhausted, Selman taps out and Dyakowski takes the stage.

***

“My name is Peter Dyakowski and I’m a Hamilton dad,” he starts. This is important, as his fatherhood is one of the central themes underpinning his entire message. His delegation is centered around a vignette about selling Girl Guide cookies with his children in October of 2022 and how they were rudely ignored by people who were clearly home but refused to answer the door “for this cute little girl.”

The story rambles and darts so much so that it’s almost hard to keep up. While Selman speaks like a well-trained Republican congressman, Dyakowski is more like the Commander in Chief himself, telling folksy stories at his own pace and drawing his own conclusions from his own narrow worldview.

Deciphering the story, it appears that the people who ignored his child’s knock at the door were avoiding interactions with the public because canvassers wouldn’t let them “have a moment of peace”. The house was on a bus route and Dyakowski believed that the canvassers were trying to secure sign locations. “Imagine if, instead of behind that door, a canvasser had, not the promise of a sign that might influence some people, but a vote that they could lock in, and once that vote is cast, it can’t go for anybody else,” he says, clumsily attempting to tie the frayed threads of his yarn together.

Dyakowski’s contention is that, with online voting as an option, canvassers might coerce a voter into casting a ballot for their candidate right there, on the spot. That would, of course, be illegal. Section 49 (2) of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996 clearly states that any behaviour of that kind is illegal and it’s a candidate’s responsibility to ensure their canvassers act according to provincial law. And, the process of logging into your online voting portal, getting things set up, casting a ballot, and checking if your vote is correct would be so cumbersome, it’s hard to imagine any scenario, aside from one where a canvasser is using threats of physical violence, where someone could be coerced into casting a ballot “on the doorstep”.

On the flip side, canvassers can be pushy right now without online voting. I have personally seen representatives of campaigns use intimidation tactics to try and guilt, force, or pressure someone into casting a ballot their way. Later in his presentation, Dyakowski references how seniors and new immigrants might be easily coerced if online voting were an option, but ask anyone who has worked in politics in any capacity how many times they’ve heard someone say “Oh, I can’t support your candidate. I’m [insert group here] and we always vote [insert party here].”

Dyakowski continues, giving away a little of the right-wing populist organizing game. He references an article from Thorold Today - the same article Selman references - and repeats the claims contained within. Looks like they’re not just sharing Bay Observer articles in their group chat!

What Dyakowski takes issue with from Thorold is the length of their election - 12 days - and the ease with which people could cast ballots given the online system. “Voting anytime, anywhere, 24/7. So that means, you could vote from your dining room, your living room, your meeting room, your lunch room…bathroom! Everywhere becomes a polling station!” he says.

First, how many rooms do you have in your house? Second, why is convenience a problem? I’ll get to that later.

Dyakowski’s contention is that online voting “does away” with the secret ballot (which he called “cherished” multiple times in one sentence).

“We could have wonderful, perfect polling stations, but if anyone could vote anytime, anywhere, as this document promises, anything can happen,” he says, without informing us as to what that “anything” might be.

The one minute warning bell goes off, Dyakowski thinks he’s out of time, but, when informed that he has another 60 seconds, he grins and says “so what else do you guys want to talk about?” He then takes his remaining time to keep ranting, saying that allowing people to vote from their phone “and then go back to their Wordle” will make it so that elections “aren’t special”. It’s clear he has no more prepared remarks, if he ever had any, but he continues, repeating himself again and again as the clock runs down.

During questions, Dundas councillor Alex Wilson pushes back on Dyakowski’s claims, asking why he has an issue with online voting, but not mail-in voting, which also offers the option to vote anywhere, anytime. Dyakowski responds that “mail-in voting is already out there” and that there isn’t enough evidence to prove that online voting is “a trustable technology”. Wilson presses Dyakowski on this, but he simply repeats his lines, saying that online voting would make it faster and easier to obtain a coerced vote.

This exchange carries on for a while, with Wilson noting that, when voters are given the option to vote early, they do, showing a desire for people to engage in ways that are accessible and convenient for them.

Dyakowski takes issue with this. “I don’t believe voting should be convenient,” he says, “I think it should be thoughtful, I think it should take a degree of effort, and intent, and by allowing the people who really want to vote to go out and vote early, well our eagerest voters are going to go out and vote on election day. By bringing those votes forward, we’re now removing that public, civic pressure from election day itself. Fewer people voting on election day now means you no longer have mass movement of voting on election day and this will lead further to the withering of the importance of election day and provide less pressure for those lower intent voters to go out and vote on election day when it’s presumably that everyone has already voted by then.”

That’s six “election days” in three sentences, for those counting.

Next is Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson, who asks Dyakowski to clarify his comments about immigrant communities being coerced to vote a certain way. Dyakowski says that immigrants “might have extremely strong social bonds and pressures that might compel them to vote a certain way and we’re denying them the privacy of the voting booth.” This continues for a long while and goes nowhere productive.

Ward 9’s Brad Clark (after much technical difficulty) asks for clarification about what the problems were in Thorold. Dyakowski says voters received multiple voting cards and turnout declined. Clark drills down, asking if Dyakowski believes the decline in turnout was because of online voting. Dyakowski says it’s a “correlation that should be explored seriously.” This also carries on, with Dyakowski claiming that Markham “rolled out” voter turnout in 2022, which is false, as Markham has had online voting since 2003. But that’s okay, because Dyakowski throws in, unprompted, the quip, “I don’t think of Markham as a real city.”

OHHHH! Sick municipal burn, bro! Is Markham a marshmallow? Because they just got ROASTED! ~AIR HORN SOUNDSSSSSSSSSSSSS~

Clark’s technical difficulties start up again, so the conversation dies there.

Next up is Kroetsch, who picks up where Alex Wilson left off and tries to hold Dyakowski to account. Kroetsch pushes back against Dyakowski’s claim that seniors will be manipulated if there’s online voting, noting that he’s heard from seniors downtown who want online voting because of how hard it is to access polling stations. Dyakowski instead says we need more polling stations and curbside voting before pivoting back to his claim that online voting will increase instances of coercion and intimidation of voters. Kroetsch asks if Dyakowski has any proof of this, to which Dyakowski answers “I hope I’m not going to have evidence that that’s going to happen. I think that’s a very reasonable expectation.” He then rambles about market incentivization and textbook capitalist economics, trying to claim that online voting would “incentivize” campaigns to use “high pressure tactics to take advantage of the vulnerable.” Again, in close elections or when canvassers aren’t properly trained, that could happen already. And it would be illegal if there were online voting, just as it’s illegal now.

Kroetsch then asks Dyakowski if he’s looked at the data around staffing in municipal elections. Municipalities across Ontario, Hamilton included, never have enough people to staff polling stations, necessitating a “secondment” of existing municipal staff to ensure the city can operate the bare minimum number of polling stations. Dyakowski doesn’t answer, so Kroetsch asks again. Dyakowski slowly pivots, saying we need to fix that problem before “creating an entirely new host of problems to work around it.”

Dyakowski’s giving us an excellent insight into the Conservative mindset. In their world, there’s “theory” - in this case, that single day elections create a surge of social momentum that carries people to polling stations, that convenient voting makes it “unspecial”, that the “sacred” secret ballot is impervious to intimidation - that quickly falls apart when subjected to any real scrutiny. Is there proof that online voting increases intimidation? shrug emoji. Did the introduction of online voting cause a decline in voter turnout in Thorold? shrug emoji. How do you fix the staffing problems we have around elections? By fixing them smirk emoji.

Kroetsch tries to get one last point of clarification from Dyakowski: is there any evidence of the things you’ve claimed happening in the Ward 4 HWDSB trustee by-election. Dyakowski’s answer? That election isn’t comparable, plus the city loves sole-sourced contracts, so there’s that. Then there’s some conspiracy mongering about “nefarious actors” who try to manipulate elections. It’s a word-salad of a non-answer. Kroetsch asks, again, and Dyakowski claims that low voter turnout can be attributed to online voting “[reducing] the stakes and the importance of election day” and that his “assertion is not disproven by the low voter turnout in that election.”

I’m tired of telling conservatives that correlation ≠ causation because they never listen, but I guess it needs to be restated again.

Ward 11 councillor Mark Tadeson offers a folksy analogy about his campaign before raising the issue that people with differing abilities might need online voting to help them cast ballots. Dyakowski says he couldn’t have reached out to anyone living with disabilities because he only found out about the online voting proposal “two days ago”.

Tadeson’s comments are important here, and help explain his eventual vote. Dyakowski and some of council’s conservative block oppose online voting because of fears about possible negatives. Tadeson’s perspective is informed by his membership on a committee that considers the perspectives of people living with disabilities. He’s heard from people for whom online voting would be transformative, allowing them to participate with the same independence and dignity as everyone else. Dyakowski tells us to be scared of what we don’t know; Tadeson tells us to think about how this could make our elections more fair for everyone.

Clark and Ward 5’s Matt Francis pitch Dyakowski some softballs, and the whole show carries on for another excruciating five minutes before the speaker’s list is exhausted and the delegates retreat.

***

When it comes time for AF&A to discuss the actual motion, there are a lot of questions. And a lot of comments. Most members speak forcefully in favour or against, with Ward 1’s Maureen Wilson being the exception, except to push back on Dyakowski’s claim that immigrant communities might be more easily manipulated than others. With Mayor Horwath absent from the meeting, Maureen Wilson becomes the crucial swing vote between the four members who are obviously in favour and the three who are obviously opposed.

The motion is carved up and put to AF&A members. The first motion is to allow for the OSV tabulators to be leased and used, meaning our elections will once again have a “fill in the bubble” paper ballot. All members present vote in favour.

The second motion is to authorize the use of online voting in 2026. Kroetsch, Alex Wilson, Hwang, and Tadeson vote in favour. Maureen Wilson joins the three present members of the right-wing block in voting against the motion. The motion is defeated on a four-four tie.

A third motion to allow mail-in ballots passed 8-0, as did a fourth motion to procure software that would allow polling workers to more easily update the voter’s list.

The whole package was then shipped off to city council for debate at today’s meeting.

The facts

There is a lot we don’t know about online voting. A review article from 2020 by two political scientists states rather bluntly that:

“More than fifteen years after initial experimentation, internet voting’s effect on voter turnout remains unclear. Governments have often made subjective assessments based on one or two trials, without considering other variables that affect turnout.”⁵

This article is important, as it uses a large dataset of online municipal elections in Ontario, giving us one of the clearest pieces of academic research on the matter in our own backyard. Their findings provide important context.

The core finding is that online voting appeared to increase turnout by around 3.5% from 2003 to 2018 (important to note that, if the 2022 elections were included, that increase might have been wiped out). But the authors caution that, when looking at other jurisdictions, its clear that such an increase could be attributed to lowering the overall barriers to participation. If there were the widespread adoption of mail-in ballots, as was the case in Switzerland, then the introduction of online voting might not have an effect. Similarly, if online voting is only used for advance polling, as is the case in Estonia, then the impact might be diminished.

The authors conclude by noting: “While internet voting is far from a silver bullet, it may bring some citizens back into the electoral process and prevent others from leaving it…Ultimately, internet voting is but one of a number of electoral reforms designed to change the cost, visibility and importance of voting.”⁶

It isn’t the only thing that could help, but it could help.

The research is still scattered. A 2017 paper from Estonia indicates that, while online voting might not increase turnout, it can be “habit forming”, meaning that, if young voters are consistently given the option to vote online, they may become more reliable voters in the future.⁷ A 2024 article revisiting turnout in Ontario’s municipal elections once again found that there’s no identifiable and substantive increase in turnout that can be attributed to online voting.⁸

A 2013 study of municipal elections held online in Norway found that there were no instances of coercion, no vote buying or “high pressure tactics”, and no breaches of security or privacy. Voter turnout did not increase and disparities between people of varying socio-economic backgrounds participating did not decline, but voters appreciated having a new option and overwhelmingly supported its continued use.⁹ A 2018 study of online voting on three Indigenous reserves in Canada found broad support for its use and its increased ability to reach voters who were off-reserve at the time of the election, though noted that online voters tended to be older, educated, and wealthier - people who are already likely to vote.¹⁰

***

So here’s the thing: Selman and Dyakowski’s concerns don’t have any validation in the literature. There have been no instances of fraud, no coercion, no unscrupulous behaviour by rogue canvassers that can be directly attributed to online voting. But there are also no identifiable benefits beyond what we already have in place.

In essence, online voting simply gives those who are already predisposed to cast a ballot just one more way to participate. It increases the convenience factor that makes elections ever so slightly less of a burden - a burden that the people who would be most likely to use online voting have shown themselves more than happy to endure to participate.

But Dyakowski doesn’t want convenient elections. He said, on the record, “I don’t believe voting should be convenient.” While one could be excused for thinking this is part of a right-wing plot, I think the answer is more simple.

Dyakowski lives in a world heavily informed by nostalgia. His is a world where friends, families, and neighbours all link hands and walk to their nearest elementary school gym or church basement, venturing into a polling station together to cast ballots and share in the democratic experience like some kind of utopian festival dedicated to civic duty. He spent a fair amount of his time before council talking about the importance of “election day” as an “event” that would be made unspecial by the introduction of online voting. But election day’s importance has been declining for decades. There’s been a consistent decline in voter turnout in Hamilton’s municipal elections since 1976, which was the closest we had gotten to turnout over 50% since the 60’s. So Dyakowski’s opposition is to protect an imaginary vision of the world - a world that barely even existed in history.

This is a different approach than the one taken by Selman. Dyakowski’s opposition is couched in nostalgia and privilege. Selman’s opposition is slightly more conspiratorial, warning about the dangers of the unknown in online voting. “Is the current system perfect? No. But it does work. It’s trusted, it’s transparent,” he told AF&A during his delegation. The contrast is that online voting is untrustworthy and opaque. We know what bubble sheet tabulators do, we don’t know what online systems do.

These presentations show the different strategies on the populist right in Hamilton. Dyakowski was folksy, off-the-cuff, and appealed to nostalgia. Selman was aggressive, combative, and leaned into conspiracy. Both shared talking points and a reliance on a single Thorold Today article, but their presentation style was different. That’ll be important to remember in 2026.

Indeed, if the performance at AF&A speaks to anything, it’s that Dyakowski would be a better candidate than Selman. The latter’s style is informed by a certain “online-ness” that simply doesn’t play well with Hamilton’s electorate. It’s very late Gen X/early Millennial coded and only works with the most habitually of online people in the community - the kinds of folks who are loud and very visible, but who represent a small and politically insignificant fraction of the electorate. The bots and sock puppets on the far-right social media site X/Twitter don’t vote, but the senior who thinks TikTok is just a sound a clock makes does vote.

The former’s style, on the other hand, is homespun, Trumpian, and simple. One could easily see Dyakowski’s style appealing to an electorate already being primed by Scott Radley editorials and the Bay Observer’s whole vibe to be mad as hell and uninterested in taking it any longer. But Selman was the first out of the gate in announcing his intentions, so it looks like Dyakowski will stick to the backrooms for now.

***

It appears that online voting won’t be coming to Hamilton anytime soon. If a moderate councillor like Maureen Wilson is willing to cast a vote against it, then it isn’t hard to imagine a scenario at today’s meeting where Cassar, Hwang, Kroetsch, Nann, Tadeson, and Alex Wilson would support online voting while the mayor, Beattie, Clark, Francis, Jackson, McMeekin, Pauls, Spadafora, and Maureen Wilson would not. It’s a matter of accepting the recommendation from AF&A, so the vote will look a little different, but the point still stands.

Online voting isn’t, as researchers have noted, a “silver bullet”. From the 2016 Parliamentary survey, it’s clear that many Canadians still have concerns over the security of an online vote. And, in places where it’s been implemented, it seems to serve the already engaged, leaving out the people who are choosing to sit out municipal elections altogether.

But it is just one more tool in the toolkit for how we can make democracy more accessible. Advocates for people living with disabilities, Indigenous communities, and downtown seniors have all come out strongly in favour of online voting for how it lowers one more barrier to participation.

There’s work that needs to be done before online voting is a sure thing. Selman brought up some reasonable questions when he asked “Where’s the evidence? Where’s the outreach? Where’s the research? Where’s the debate?” But we get the evidence through implementation, the outreach before elections, the research by studying the vote after the fact. In order to answer questions about online voting, we might simply have to implement it and see how it goes. That’s how Markham and Norway and Estonia did it.

The debate is ongoing, both online and in person at city hall. It’s a debate worth having. But it’s a debate that needs to be had using facts, data, and evidence. When the only two delegates speaking to the matter are representatives of Hamilton’s well-funded right-wing populist machine who lean into conspiracies and rely on fear, then we aren’t having a real debate. We’re getting a performance.

1  _{Chapter 6: Online and Electronic Voting in Report of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform - Strengthening Democracy in Canada: Principles, Process, and Public Engagement for Electoral Reform. December, 2016, 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (Link)}

2  _{Charla Jones. “Mark your ballot with a mouse click; Markham allows online voting Hotlines, Web sites offer how-tos” Toronto Star, November 6, 2003 (Proquest archive); Ann Perry. “Even in great race, voter turnout lags badly; 39% figure prompts concern” Toronto Star, November 13, 2003 (Proquest archive).}

3  _{Irene Wong. “Markham sees first decline in voter turnout since online voting launched” Markham Today, November 1, 2022 (Link)}

4  _{Bernard Lansbergen. “Thorold Council torn on online voting in 2026 municipal election” Thorold Today, January 15, 2025 (Link)}

5  _{Goodman, Nicole, and Leah C Stokes. 2020. “Reducing the Cost of Voting: An Evaluation of Internet Voting’s Effect on Turnout.” British Journal of Political Science 50 (3): 1155–67. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000849.}

6  _Ibid.

7  _{Solvak, Mihkel, and Kristjan Vassil. 2018. “Could Internet Voting Halt Declining Electoral Turnout? New Evidence That E‐Voting Is Habit Forming.” Policy and Internet 10 (1): 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.160.}

8  _{Stockemer, Daniel, and Michael Wigginton. 2024. “The (Complex) Effect of Internet Voting on Turnout: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations.” Policy & Internet. 16 (3): 607–27. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.393.}

9  _{Segaard, Signe Bock, Harald Baldersheim, and Jo Saglie. 2013. “THE NORWEGIAN TRIAL WITH INTERNET VOTING: RESULTS AND CHALLENGES.” REVISTA GENERAL DE DERECHO PUBLICO COMPARADO, no. 13.}

10  _{Goodman, N; Gabel, C and Budd, B. 2018. Online Voting in Indigenous Communities: Lessons from Canada. Logic, Language, Information, and Computation : 14th International Workshop, WoLLIC 2007, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 2-5, 2007 : Proceedings /. Vol. 11143. Berlin ; New York : Springer,. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00419-4_5.}