An oped co-authored by myself and Dr. Nicole Goodman of the Center for e-Democracy was published in the Ottawa Citizen today in which we tackle the issue of research funding in Canada for election technology.
Here’s the problem: there’s almost no way to fund research collaborations with agencies and organizations in the public space, i.e., the ones actually running elections.
Under the current national science and engineering research strategy it must involve a for-profit company. As a consequence, the public good of secure and accessible election technology research can only be advanced by the interests of private industry.
Canada needs a fresh strategy that recognizes the fundamental role of research in the public interest. Consider this: in 2014 almost one hundred cities in Ontario deployed internet voting, and we expect that number to grow by 50% in 2018. Internet voting is going forward in this country whether we innovate or not. We have the need. We must now find the way.
Read the article here.