Political Science students share e-voting insights with Hamilton

Brock students in a Canadian Politics in the Digital Age course recently took a deep dive into the use of voting technology in future municipal elections thanks to a partnership with the City of Hamilton and voting technology firm Neuvote.

Associate Professor of Political Science Nicole Goodman, who taught the course, says that “while elections are growing increasingly digital, there are new technologies that either need to be tested or that we know can improve electoral integrity but aren’t necessarily being readily adopted yet.”

With this in mind, Goodman and the students of POLI 4P17 undertook a project to analyze two digital election services.

“We looked at a new online registration service intended to resolve current issues with voters’ lists in Canada and at an online voting system with verifiability, which is considered a best practice in the election space,” says Goodman.

Students took part in a mock election using Neuvote’s platform and then analyzed security and privacy, voter use and participation. election experience, accessibility and election evaluation across the two platforms.

They also took part in training sessions with the City of Hamilton, Neuvote and other experts, including a software engineer and a municipal administrator from the City of Markham, where verifiable online voting was implemented in 2022.

Fourth-year Political Science major Nabiha Ghafoor worked with History major Teaghan Deaves and Critical Criminology major Aidan Lee to look at election evaluation, or how to ensure online voting systems are secure, transparent and trustworthy.

“Rigorous election evaluation can build voter confidence while enhancing accessibility and efficiency,” says Ghafoor. “When working at the intersection of technology and democracy, the context and lived experiences of the local community are crucial, so understanding these nuances allowed us to create recommendations that were not only innovative but also practical and tailored to Hamilton’s needs.”

Lee says his biggest takeaway from the experience was looking behind the curtain at the “complexity of the election process.”

“Many people, including myself, do not think about the behind-the-scenes factors that make elections possible and maintain our democracy,” he says. “These are the types of things you don’t notice until something goes wrong, but they are exceedingly important.”

The students presented their findings to representatives from Neuvote and the City of Hamilton and developed final reports for the partner organizations.

Matthew Trennum, City Clerk for the City of Hamilton, says the project was “a great opportunity to hear from new voices as council looks at how they want to proceed with the 2026 municipal election.”

“I was very impressed with the students’ knowledge of legislative requirements and the things we are looking to achieve when we start putting policy in place at a municipal government level,” he says. “They provided some great comments that we can use going forward — it was a wonderful experience and I’d recommend it to any other municipality.”

Matthew Heuman, CEO of Neuvote, has collaborated with Goodman and her students on previous projects. He says this year’s experience yielded valuable new insights, including one group’s recommendation on how to provide voters assurance about the security of their data.

“The students suggested a privacy statement button throughout the process of submitting, so if a voter wants to better understand the privacy impact, a little pop-up can explain what we’re doing with the data,” he says. “Especially in this day and age, people are becoming more adept at understanding what collection of the data on the Internet means, so providing that insight to the voter is something that we took back to the company immediately.”

Goodman describes experiential education projects like this one as “an important part of the future of university training.”

“Every time I do one of these projects, there is a very high job placement rate afterwards,” she says. “The students greatly benefit from the real-world experience and the partners benefit from the knowledge generated.”


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