The City of London wants you to vote in your underwear next election.

Online voting might find its way to London after the idea was presented to council Monday night. The suggestion came from councillor Nancy Branscombe after years of fluctuating voter turnout in the city.

“Quite simply, cities and municipalities who are using Internet voting have far higher voter turnout and participation than we do here in London,” Branscombe wrote on her blog last week. “We cannot simply sit by and watch.”

The promises of online voting are numerous, including spikes to voter turnout, cost savings and an election process that appeals to younger voters.

According to councillor Harold Usher, City officials favoured the idea at council Monday night.

“We didn’t have any choice but to look at it positively,” he said, noting that a number of other municipalities are using the system, including Markham and Stratford.

But not everyone is praising the idea.

Greg Fowler, a citizen journalist and community activist, cautioned against running with the idea, especially with an election approaching in October.

“It needs a go-slower approach than what Nancy appears to be suggesting,” he said. “Why did she wait until now to propose it?”

Fowler participated in the Strengthening Neighbourhood Initiative, which made recommendations to increase political involvement in London. Part of the plan praised the Internet as a way to boost interest. The task now is to come up with creative solutions in a thorough vetting period.

“That’s the process in which online voting should be investigated I think,” he added.

The City is launching its own feasibility plan for online voting to discover how other municipalities have handled the system.

The plan will try to address some concerns about security, which surfaced at the meeting on Monday.

“We have to be careful that we conquer all the security risks as well as the technological risks,” Usher said. “In other words, what happens if the power fails, or if you have a glitch, or have a virus, or something like that.”

Once the feasibility plan is finalized, councillors predict the shift to online voting is just a matter of time.

“In this day in age, everything is going to go technological and this is just one of them whose time is waiting to come,” Usher said.

If introduced, London will be catching with up the University Students’ Council, which introduced online voting for its election in 2000. Turnout spiked from 18 per cent to 26 per cent in the first year.

Based on this precedence, City officials hope students will make it to the polls in digital droves to cast a ballot once the system is introduced.

Brandon Sousa, municipal affairs commissioner for the USC, believed London will find a successful blend between online and offline voting. He argued London is in a better position to experiment with online voting because it has less red tape than cities like Toronto.

“There will be a large transition time before voting is solely online,” he said.

While USC voter turnout jumped after online voting was introduced, campus elections saw greater increases last year and in the 2003/04 school year while years like 2001/2002 saw much lower participations, calling the guaranteed benefit of online voting into question.

“Turnout varies somewhat based on the number of candidates, the excitement those candidates generate among the student body and other ballot questions. But you can see a noticeable jump in turnout after online voting was introduced.”

Despite all the concerns about online voting, councillor Judy Bryant said the system would get introduced eventually.

“We have to work pretty quickly to get that in place, and that’s probably not impossible but that’s probably a bit tough to do,” Bryant said. “We have to dot the Is and cross the Ts and we’ll be all for it.”