In a press release issued on Thursday, April 11, Élections Québec confirmed that it was terminating its Internet voting pilot project. This project was intended to enable electors in 21 Quebec municipalities, including Ville de Saint-Lazare, to test this voting method during the 2025 municipal general elections.

Last October, the organization launched a call for tenders to acquire an Internet voting solution. None of the three suppliers who submitted bids was able to meet the project's requirements. Under the circumstances, this call for tenders was cancelled, as was the pilot project.

For Chief Electoral Officer Jean-François Blanchet, the pilot project was always conditional on the use of a reliable, secure and accessible solution. " Our requirements were high, but my team and I remain convinced of their validity. We're disappointed to put an end to the project, of course, but there was no question of compromising to hold this first Internet voting trial. "

The call for tenders aimed to select an experienced supplier who had already participated in numerous large-scale electoral events. The company had to be ISO 27001 certified, an internationally recognized standard for IT security. The Internet voting solution also had to pass security tests and audits carried out by independent firms at the time of selection and after contract signature.

This work on Internet voting nevertheless enabled Élections Québec to acquire expertise, which was one of the objectives of this project. In the press release, the organization states that it will continue to observe experiments in Canada and elsewhere in the world in order to keep abreast of advances in this field, particularly in terms of available technologies, electors' expectations of this voting method and any international consensus that may emerge. She does not rule out the possibility of other Internet voting pilot projects in the future.

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