Letter to the Editor
Dear Editor,
There is an election coming that will use pin numbers and electronic ballots, or touch-tone phones. I can cope with this, I can use a computer and I have touch-tone phones. However I do know there are people in the municipality that have neither of these things. I hear some muttering, “I guess I just won’t vote.”
Internet connections in parts of Meaford and Grey County are spotty at best, and not every household has a computer. Not everyone in the households with computers know how to operate them. If someone has to ask their spouse or child how to vote, that vote isn’t very secret. I have it on good authority that there are more than a few party lines out there. There goes the secret ballot again. The residents in the long term nursing facility are going to be able to vote with computers and pin numbers and municipal staff assisting them. Again, not very secret, but apparently confidential. Why not let them vote with the sort of paper ballots they are used to?
This current Council in their headlong rush to save, save, save is impinging on our democratic right to a secret ballot. They are also snipping away at voter turnout.
If Home Depot can have their computers hacked with their firewalls, I am sure that these election results can be hacked.
I do not approve of using hackable devices in order to save money. I am not very conservative in my outlook except when it concerns my right to vote. With a paper ballot and proper voting lists, how I vote is kept separate from the fact that I voted. With the internet and pin numbers hackable by any competent teenager or foreign power, my vote may not be secret. Wars have been fought for this right. It should not be abrogated in the name of savings.
Kathy Kerr, Meaford
