In a move designed to cut costs in half and improve member participation, the College Council has decided to switch to e-voting for the 2003 Council Election.

After an in-depth review of the proposal by the Election Committee, the College Council made the decision at its meeting on March 1.

"E-voting will be faster, cheaper and more secure," Executive Co-ordinator Richard Lewko told Council members. "There will be no more problems with voters misplacing ballots they’ve been mailed, or ballots lost in the mail. Paperless voting is also more environmentally friendly.

"Our members can vote from home, from school, from public libraries and Internet cafés."

About 95,000 teachers have accounts with the Education Network of Ontario, the second-largest Internet service provider in Ontario after Sympatico. An Ontario Knowledge Network for Learning report says all Ontario schools are connected to the Internet.

The College will launch a members-only area on its web site later this year. The same level of security used by banks and credit card companies will keep members’ information – and members’ votes – secure and secret. To vote, a member need only log in, create their private password-protected account, and vote. Once a member has voted, that function will be disabled in their account to ensure they can only vote once.

E-voting is a cost-effective alternative to the conventional mail-in ballot. The estimated tab for the 2003 election is $296,000 or about half the price for the mail-in ballot method.

The 2000 mail-in ballot cost $504,637 to administer, up from $421,731 in 1997. The cost of a mail-in ballot was expected to jump to more than $600,000 in 2003.

Voter turnout for College Council members plunged to 13.9 per cent in 2000 from 32 per cent in 1997 and the College’s Election Committee hopes that e-voting will reverse the downturn. Members will be able to vote any time of the day or night during a period of several weeks up to the election date of April 14, 2003.

Other regulatory bodies in the province with large memberships are also looking at e-voting.