{"id":98957,"date":"2025-01-30T15:49:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-30T20:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/?p=98957"},"modified":"2025-01-31T14:50:00","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T19:50:00","slug":"class-project-sees-political-science-students-consult-on-e-voting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/2025\/01\/class-project-sees-political-science-students-consult-on-e-voting\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Science students share e-voting insights with Hamilton"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Associate Professor of Political Science Nicole Goodman, who taught the course, says that \u201cwhile 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\u2019t necessarily being readily adopted yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this in mind, Goodman and the students of POLI 4P17 undertook a project to analyze two digital election services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked at a new online registration service intended to resolve current issues with voters\u2019 lists in Canada and at an online voting system with verifiability, which is considered a best practice in the election space,\u201d says Goodman.<\/p>\n

Students took part in a mock election using Neuvote\u2019s platform and then analyzed security and privacy, voter use and participation. election experience, accessibility and election evaluation across the two platforms.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cRigorous election evaluation can build voter confidence while enhancing accessibility and efficiency,\u201d says Ghafoor. \u201cWhen 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\u2019s needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lee says his biggest takeaway from the experience was looking behind the curtain at the \u201ccomplexity of the election process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMany people, including myself, do not think about the behind-the-scenes factors that make elections possible and maintain our democracy,\u201d he says. \u201cThese are the types of things you don\u2019t notice until something goes wrong, but they are exceedingly important.\u201d<\/p>\n

The students presented their findings to representatives from Neuvote and the City of Hamilton and developed final reports for the partner organizations.<\/p>\n

Matthew Trennum, City Clerk for the City of Hamilton, says the project was \u201ca great opportunity to hear from new voices as council looks at how they want to proceed with the 2026 municipal election.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very impressed with the students\u2019 knowledge of legislative requirements and the things we are looking to achieve when we start putting policy in place at a municipal government level,\u201d he says. \u201cThey provided some great comments that we can use going forward \u2014 it was a wonderful experience and I\u2019d recommend it to any other municipality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Heuman, CEO of Neuvote, has collaborated with Goodman and her students on previous projects. He says this year\u2019s experience yielded valuable new insights, including one group\u2019s recommendation on how to provide voters assurance about the security of their data.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019re doing with the data,\u201d he says. \u201cEspecially 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Goodman describes experiential education projects like this one as \u201can important part of the future of university training.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I do one of these projects, there is a very high job placement rate afterwards,\u201d she says. \u201cThe students greatly benefit from the real-world experience and the partners benefit from the knowledge generated.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":98958,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9794,13793,1,38],"tags":[14187,14191,4104,4811,1153,522,9669,14190,14188,9670,5930,14189],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98957"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=98957"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98957\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98968,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98957\/revisions\/98968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brocku.ca\/brock-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}