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OTTAWA —
Members of Parliament will be embarking on a historic first in the House of Commons Monday: placing their votes electronically through a new app system.
It is the latest in COVID-19 alterations to parliamentary business, and one that’s been many months in the making.
Promised as a technique only to be adopted in pandemic times and starting with the votes happening Monday afternoon, MPs participating remotely will be using their phones to press yea, nay, or abstain.
The first vote to be taken this way is set to be on the Bloc Quebecois opposition day motion regarding seniors, followed by a second reading vote on Bill C-14, implementing the new measures from the fall economic statement.
A move pursued by the governing Liberals, the House of Commons administration has been working on the voting-by-app system for months. As it’s designed, the app would allow for a nearly instantaneous vote count, speeding up the process. The way votes were being conducted virtually in a modified rollcall through Zoom has been taking up considerable time.
The app has prompted some security concerns and hesitation from political observers who want to continue to see MPs stand up and be counted, so to speak, rather than be a number in a tally.
The House sought to address this by putting in place a range of security and authorization measures including:
- The voting has to happen on MPs’ House-managed mobile device;
- Before the vote is submitted MPs have to use a facial recognition system to verify their identity to ensure that an MP was the one voting;
- The whip of each recognized party has access to a tool to confirm the visual identity of each member voting through the app; and
- The votes of members voting by electronic means will be made available to the public during the 10-minute voting period.
MPs participating in-person can continue to cast their votes by standing up in the Chamber at the beginning of each vote. MPs who are having technical difficulties registering their votes through the app will be able to revert back to the virtual voting platform that’s been in place since last fall.
The terms of the new app voting system were agreed to at the start of the 2021 hybrid sitting agreement, which is in place until the end of the spring sitting in June. The hybrid agreement allows MPs to continue to be allowed to participate in House business either in-person in Ottawa, or by logging in remotely from their riding.
Before the new system was adopted test votes with all members had to be completed and the Speaker needed to receive notice from the House leaders of all recognized parties stating that they were satisfied that the remote voting application was ready for prime time.
More coming.
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