Electronic Voting

Like many other municipalities in Ontario (217 to be exact), City Council initially approved the switch to Electronic voting from mail-in ballots on January 24, 2017 for the 2018 election. Since then, Council has unanimously confirmed this decision on January 28, 2021 for the 2022 election.

There are many advantages to adopting this method of voting:

Emergency Preparedness: Voting by Internet or Telephone does not require any large gatherings at polling stations, and allows voters to vote from the comfort and safety of their home if future emergency stay-at-home orders are issued.

Efficiency: reduces printing, return postage fees, staff time for vote counting, and the amount of paper utilized.

Accessibility: Electronic Voting is a convenient option for electors allowing them to use their own devices and access their ballots anytime during the voting period, and from anywhere with Internet or Telephone access. The City’s Accessibility Advisory Committee has vetted this switch, and have endorsed the use of use of Electronic voting.

Accuracy: Electronic voting uses electronic ballots exclusively reducing counting error from manual tabulations;

Automatic Tabulation: 100% of the results will be available in the hours after 8pm on April 10, once all voters have completed their voting.

Convenience: Thousands of Kawartha Lakes non-resident electors do not live in Kawartha Lakes, and therefore should be given the equal opportunity to vote as those who live here. Every elector will be able to vote from a location of their convenience. Also, compared to mail-in voting from years past, voters will no longer need to find a postal box, or rely on the postal service to ensure their ballot returned back to City Hall.

How to vote

Voting is convenient with Electronic Voting:

1. Check the Voters’ List to ensure you are on it, and your mailing address is up to date.
2. Wait for your Voting PIN Letter to arrive in the mail by March 31st.
   • Keep the Voting PIN Letter in a safe place until voting opens on Thursday, April 1, 2025 at 9:00am
   • You will have 10 Days to vote, but do not wait until the last minute in case you have difficulty logging into the voting system
3. Open your Voting PIN Letter, and find the PIN number that will let you access to the voting system.
4. You have 2 Ways that you can vote:
   • Vote by internet (takes about 5 minutes)
     • Visit the voting website provided in your voting PIN letter by entering the address into the address bar at the top of your internet browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge etc.)
     • Enter your PIN (Do Not Include Spaces)
       
     • Enter your date of birth
       
     • Complete the Captcha challenge as shown on the screen
     • If you receive an error after several attempts to login, this may be because your birthdate information is incorrect in our Voting System. You will need a new PIN. Please contact us a 705-324-9411 ext. 1888.
     • Follow the prompts through all contests, and complete your ballot by pressing Submit Ballot
   • Vote in-person at City Hall or the Lindsay Library
     • Visit City Hall at 26 Francis Street, or the Lindsay Library at 190 Kent Street, and bring your Voting PIN Letter with you
     • Once arrived, Election Staff will guide you to the electronic touchscreen voting equipment
     • If you need assistance, Election Staff can help! Just ask and we can help you type in your PIN or Date of Birth.
5. Want to ensure your vote counted? Write down the Confirmation Code you receive after voting. Following the Election, the Clerk's Office will publish a list of confirmation codes that were included in the vote totals. You will be able to find your unique confirmation code on that list to confirm you vote was successfully included in the vote results.
6. If you do not have access to a touch-tone telephone, or internet at your home, visit a Kawartha Lakes Service Centre, or select Kawartha Lakes Library Branch during regular business hours, and use their touch-screen kiosk or public-access computers.
7. If you did not receive your Voting PIN letter in the mail by October 11, you will be able to obtain your Voting PIN letter from the Election Office at City Hall, or at any Municipal Service Centre.

Things you don’t have to do to vote in this municipal election:

• Drive to a polling station
• Wait in a line
• Produce an email address
• Give your vote to a live person on the telephone (ensuring the secrecy of the ballot)
• Get out of your pyjamas (vote from the comfort of your home)

If you need more information, or have any questions or concerns, we’re here to help. Contact the Office of the City Clerk, or the Elections Office at City Hall, 26 Francis Street, Lindsay ON (705) 324-9411 ext. 1888.

Kawartha Lakes, like many other municipalities in Ontario, have adopted an alternative voting system Electronic Voting for the 2022 Municipal Elections. This alternative voting method has been used in our previous Municipal Elections in 2018 as well as in many other municipalities (Markham, Newmarket, Vaughan, Townships in Peterborough County, Municipalities in Muskoka, Townships in Haliburton County, etc.) for both efficiency and voter turnout.

Electronic Voting offers convenience for all voters whether they live in Sebright, Seagrave, Scarborough, or Scranton, as all eligible voters will receive their voting kits in the mail, and will be able to vote from the convenience of their own home. It eliminates polling stations, advance polls and proxy voting. It provides accessibility and has been fully endorsed by our Accessibility Advisory Committee. It transforms every telephone, smartphone, or desktop computer into a ballot box.

If you need more information, or have any questions or concerns, we’re here to help. Contact the Office of the City Clerk, or the Elections Office at City Hall, 26 Francis Street, Lindsay ON (705-324-9411 ext. 1888)

Can I see Electronic Voting in action before voting?

Internet Voting:

Will there be any paper ballots available for electors?

No paper ballots are needed. Kawartha Lakes is embarking on the alternative model of Electronic Voting for this election, therefore this will be the City’s third paperless-ballot election. This has been selected as the option for electors to ensure that all electors (whether those that live in Kawartha Lakes, or abroad) get an equal opportunity to vote.

Since amalgamation, the City has never had a traditional polling station model of voting, and the first five elections had been elections have been held exclusively by mail-in ballot. The 2018 Municipal Election introduced Kawartha Lakes to Electronic Voting. Provincial and Federal elections will continue to utilize paper ballots for their elections.

Who is the provider of our Electronic Voting System for the 2025 By-Election

For the 2025 By-Election, the municipality is newly partnering with Simply Voting, a Canadian company with a long history of providing technology for Internet and Telephone Municipal Elections in Ontario and around the world. Simply Voting was selected in accordance with the City's Purchasing Policy. In the 2022 Municipal Elections, Simply Voting has also partnered with over 30 other municipalities in Ontario including:

• All townships in Peterborough County;
• City of Stratford;
• City of Ajax;
• Municipality of Clarington;
• City of Belleville;
• City of Quinte West; and more.

Voters' List management is a partnership between our software provider DataFix, and the data provider for the Voters' List is Elections Ontario (as is required under the Municipal Elections Act).

Is Electronic Voting Secure?

Kawartha Lakes is committed to ensuring the security and secrecy of the vote. We will be conducting vote counting audits  and reviewing third-party penetration testing to ensure the final election results are secure, efficient, and accurate.

Simply Voting was designed from the ground-up to minimize the risk of electoral fraud or breach of secrecy:

• Voters who bypass authentication or have already voted are denied access to the ballot.
• One-vote-per-voter is guaranteed by marking electors as voted and storing the vote in a single transaction. Even if a voter submits the ballot simultaneously on several devices, this technology guarantees that only one vote is accepted.
• Ballots are rigorously checked for validity before being accepted.
• All administrator and voter activity is logged with timestamp and IP address.
• Communication between the voter’s computer and our website is encrypted with TLS 1.3 and strong cipher suites to protect against current and future encryption attacks.
• The entire voting system database is encrypted at rest using AES-256 encryption.
• The servers are “hardened” and are subjected to daily Trust Guard PCI Compliance security scans.
• The voting system is regularly subjected to penetration tests by CyberHunter and source code security audits by HP Fortify.
• Simply Voting adheres to guidelines established by the Open Web Application Security Project.
• Any change to the voting system must pass an internal security review before going live.
• All staff workstations are kept up-to-date and protected by access password, firewall, anti-virus, anti-spamware and disk encryption.
• Simply Voting authenticates emails with DomainKeys Identified Mail and the Sender Policy Framework to protect voters from phishing attacks.
• Our servers are protected by a very powerful firewall, FortiGate Unified Threat Management, which includes an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and a redundant firewall on hot standby. Webservers are further protected by the ModSecurity Web Application Firewall (WAF).
• Network access is protected by a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).
• Simply Voting uses an automated and always-on solution from Radware to protect against Denial of Service (DoS) attacks.
• Simply Voting use redundant Anycast DNS deployments which protects against DNS-based DDoS attacks.