In an Ontario town split over a nuclear dump site, the fallout is over how they’ll vote on the future

The town will hold an online vote, but an opposition group demands paper ballots

Colin Butler · CBC News Apr 14, 2024

A citizen’s group opposed to burying Canada’s stockpile of spent nuclear fuel half a kilometre below a southwestern Ontario farm town is demanding a paper ballot rather than an online vote in an upcoming referendum on whether it should welcome radioactive waste. 

Canada’s nuclear industry’s quest to find a place to store the growing amount of highly radioactive detritus it produces stretches back decades. The search has narrowed to two potential host communities in Ontario: Ignace (four hours northwest of Thunder Bay) and the Municipality of South Bruce (two hours north of London).

For years, South Bruce has found itself divided over being a potential host — split, between those who believe a new industry is a way to reclaim lost prosperity that lapsed with the glory days of farming, and those who think jobs and subsidies from the nuclear industry has blinded the others to the risks of welcoming radioactive waste into the community.  

On Monday, town councillors in South Bruce voted to accept the official question on the ballot: “Are you in favour of the Municipality of South Bruce declaring South Bruce to be a willing host for the Nuclear Waste Management Organization’s (NWMO) proposed deep geological repository?”

‘Our concern is the way that they’re holding the referendum’

“I have no issues with how the question is worded,” Michelle Stein, a member of the grassroots Protect Our Waterways — No Nuclear Waste, said.

“Our concern is the way that they’re holding the referendum as an online vote.”

Stein said unlike paper ballots, which can be audited and verified by anyone, she argues the way a computerized voting system sorts and tallies ballots is largely a mystery to laymen, hidden beneath source code that’s indecipherable to all who lack specialized knowledge. 

“This is a forever decision. Why wouldn’t they want tangible physical proof? We can go back and count those paper ballots and they can say, ‘look, here’s the ballots. This is what the people voted for.'”

The municipality of South Bruce is divided over a potential site for a nuclear waste storage facility deep below their community. A referendum to settle the matter is set for later this year. Host Colin Butler speaks with Michelle Stein, a member of Protect Our Waterways – No Nuclear Waste, to hear her concerns………………………………………………….

Errors or breaches can be difficult to detect

Still, critics say online voting is prone to cyber attacks and there’s no way to guarantee voter privacy, or the integrity of the vote. There is also no provincial standard in Ontario, or, for that matter, federally, when it comes to online voting systems. 

“There’s a lot of questions that this technology introduces around that. ‘How do I know my vote counted? How do I know it was kept secret?'” Aleksander Essex, a Western University professor who studies cyber security and crytography, said. 

At the same time however, Essex notes, he has never seen any evidence of fraud or tampering with the vote in all the years he has studied online voting. ………………………………………………………………………………………………..  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/ontario-south-bruce-nuclear-dgr-referendum-online-voting-1.7168326—

April 15, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, politics