Two IP addresses behind last-minute cyber-attacks are in the process of being shut down by the NDP after they were used to bungle the party’s electronic voting system Saturday



Click here to watch. Mark Blevis offers up a video briefing on what happened with the third-round vote.

Eric Hebert, the NDP’s chief electoral officer, contacted Nathan Cullen’s campaign manager Jamey Heath in the afternoon to alert him of the cyber-attack and to say voting results would have to be delayed until the problem could be solved.

“What they basically had done was let the voting continue in the convention itself but not in homes while they sort the problem out,” said Heath.

The NDP set up the system so that votes could be collected from the party’s 150,000 members from booths inside the convention and online through the NDP’s website.

The attack became their most severe during the day’s third ballot. As the lineups for the voting booths moved at a snail’s pace during the ballot, party president Rebecca Blaikie told the convention that voting would have to be staggered between those inside the building and those voting at home.

At the time, she blamed high traffic for the delay.

Hebert told Heath that once the IP addresses were neutralized, the votes votes during the third ballot would be counted.

“All the votes that were cast did count,” said Heath.

Cullen’s campaign, which had its base in British Columbia, was hurt by the cyber-attacks, he said. “Rank-and-file New Democrats voting at home as they were promised were denied that opportunity and inevitably some of them would give up,” he said.

“We have the most active media campaign, we have the most followers on Twitter, we have the most friends on Facebook,” he said. “Our capacity to connect those with encouraging people to vote is hindered when people can’t actually vote. It’s a huge problem for our campaign.”

“I am not saying it is the reason we were bumped off, but it didn’t help,” he said.

The campaign wouldn’t register any kind of complaint and accept Cullen having to drop out after the third ballot, he said.

Heath also felt Western Canada was neglected by poor details during the day’s many voting time changes.

“What I do find pathetic is emails about new voting times that don’t specify about new time zones,” said Heath. He pointed to a party email that mentioned the new times for the third ballot without mention of any time zones. “This is a big country.”

The NDP’s e-voting system was managed by a Spanish IT company, Scytl. Heath didn’t know the details of Elections Canada’s involvement in Scytl’s system.

Voters reported delays both at home and at the convention during the first and second rounds Saturday morning.

By the third round, the system was moving so slowly Blaikie announced to the convention that voting would be staggered. For one hour, voters inside the convention would use the system and in the next people at home could vote.

“According to the company in charge of the vote, there’s too many people accessing the system at once,” said Blaikie, after the change was announced.

The NDP and Scytl had been in talks preparing the system for months, she said.

The system was set up to handle much higher traffic — only 50 per cent of the NDP’s elegible voters participated in the convention’s first two rounds.

“We prepared for it, but with any kind of technology, sometimes even if you prepare something can still go wrong goes wrong,” said Blaikie. “What we’re doing now is fixing the problem, we’re controlling the situation, we’re checking the amount of votes, and making sure all of our members had time to vote.”

Blaikie said the system was secure from hackers trying to bungle the convention, but would provide more details on whether the vote had been compromised later.

“I hope it’s not the case,” she said, referring to any hacking. “But for the moment we’re concentrating on the third round and we’ll have more information later.”

“I’m certain the system is competely secure,” she later added.

At the time, Brad Lavigne also rejected the notion that the system had been compromised.

“The only thing that has taken place has been that they’ve delayed. They’ve jammed up the lines. They’ve occupied the space that the company was creating for our membership.”

“The system was not attacked. We don’t know all the answers at this stage.”

There were worries that the system’s glitches and slow pace might cause some votes to fall through the cracks or turn people off.

There were four per cent fewer voters on the second round than the first, but Blaikie said no votes had been lost to technical problems.

“There was pretty much the same number of people voting in the first and second rounds,” she said.

On Twitter, NDP members reported being timed out from the website before being able to vote throughout the day.

One person said they were able to access the NDP’s French website after being dealyed on the English version.

In the case of the race going to a fourth round, the vote would not be delayed into Sunday, said Blaikie.

“We will select our leader tonight,” she said.

Correction: This story has been updated to fix the title of Eric Hebert. It has also been updated to remove Elections Canada from the first paragraph of the piece.