Worried about declining voter turnout, municipal governments and political parties across Canada are increasingly adopting Internet voting. Especially at the municipal level, it is easy to see why. During last year’s civic elections in both Edmonton and Calgary, turnout was below 40 percent. Montreal did a little better, at just over 43 percent, but one might have expected more from a city wracked by corruption scandals. Turnout in Vancouver’s 2011 election was a dismal 34.5 percent. Even in most provincial and federal elections, 40 to 50 percent of electors don’t bother to vote. Clearly Canada has a problem with electoral participation, but can Internet voting actually invigorate democracy?

Evidence from at home and abroad is not encouraging. The vigorously democratic and prosperous little Baltic Republic of Estonia (pop. 1.3 million) became the first country in the world to hold legally binding elections online, in 2005. The inaugural virtual vote, supplementing traditional polling stations, was for civic elections. It worked well enough to convince the national government to adopt the technology for subsequent parliamentary, European Parliament, and municipal elections. Estonians have now voted online in a total of six country-wide elections, and by all accounts the e-votes were secure and fraud-free.

However, Estonia’s Internet voting has not produced a tangible increase in voter turnout. The high water mark was set in 1990, years before the birth of the World Wide Web, when nearly 80 percent of eligible voters defied the weakening grip of their Soviet overlords and voted in national parliamentary elections. In the next two national votes, participation fell below 60 percent. After the introduction of e-voting, it increased only marginally to 61.9 percent in 2007 and 63.5 percent in 2011. Turnout jumped an impressive 13 points between the first and second municipal e-votes, but dropped back to less than 60 percent in 2013. On balance, the Estonian experience does not recommend Internet voting as an effective cure for voter apathy.

And if it doesn’t work in Estonia, a young democracy with fresh and harrowing memories of totalitarianism, it seems unlikely to work in democratically complacent Canada. To date, the Ontario city of Markham (pop. 301,000) is the largest Canadian community to offer the option of voting online, but only for advance polls. The town of Leamington, Ontario (pop. 17,000) will become the first to go all in when it conducts its October 2014 municipal election exclusively online. Civic officials hope e-voting will cut costs and encourage greater participation among youth. This runs counter to not only the Estonian experience but also the findings of British Columbia’s Independent Panel on Internet Voting. Its research has found that those most likely to take advantage of e-voting are actually middle-aged and senior voters.

Beyond its limited effect on turnout, there are other objections to Internet voting. Estonia’s e-votes have apparently been tamper- and glitch-free so far, but in its final report issued earlier this year the B.C. Panel advised the province to “go slow” on virtual voting because of security and technical risks. In November 2012, the City of Edmonton and the University of Alberta’s Centre for Public Involvement held a mock election using an Internet-based voting system, in which residents were encouraged to vote on a variety of topics, including their favourite jellybean colour. Only 497 Edmontonians participated, and it was later found that at least one of them cheated by voting twice. He was able to do so without a sophisticated hacking effort, which raises serious concerns that a well-organized and motivated group of hackers could wreak havoc on the democratic process in Canada.

The cost of Internet voting also seems to outweigh the benefits. Edmonton’s jellybean election cost taxpayers approximately $400,000, more than $800 per vote. Spooked by the huge expense, City Council voted to shelve the whole idea. Estonia, with its e-voting experience and infrastructure, does it much cheaper, but the return on investment is still very poor. Only 2 percent of Estonians cast their ballots online in the first election to include the option, but the technology boosted the election’s cost by over 13 percent.

A number of political parties have attempted to harness Internet voting to increase turnout in their internal elections. The New Democratic Party of Canada did so for their 2012 leadership contest. It was marred by serious delays, apparently the result of a denial-of-service attack, and poor turnout – less than half of eligible voters. A  primary held by the European Green Party in advance of the 2014 European Parliament elections generated just 22,000 e-votes, barely a quarter of the number planned for by party organizers.

The beleaguered Progressive Conservative party in Alberta will allow voting via the Internet and telephone in its leadership election this September. The province’s 43-year-old governing party desperately needs to renew itself after dumping its imperious, jet-setting former leader and premier Alison Redford. Poor turnout for the leadership vote in spite of the digital outreach efforts would confirm the Tories’ downward slide.  Technical failures or security breaches would increase doubts about their competence. And the added cost of online balloting could drain as much as a million dollars from the coffers of a party that faces stiff competition from the Wildrose Party for donations and support.

Despite such risks and the paucity of evidence that virtual voting delivers any of its vaunted democratic benefits, an increasing number of politicians, parties and governments are clearly convinced it is the way of the future. Maybe so, but poor voter turnout does not primarily occur because the act of voting is too complicated or inconvenient. It occurs mostly because voters are not inspired to go to the polls by capable candidates, relevant issues, compelling narratives, and effective campaigning. Without these, there is little reason to expect many more would click on a ballot if given the option.

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Paul Pryce is Political Advisor to the Consul-General of Japan in Calgary. A former lecturer at Tallinn University and the Estonian School of Diplomacy, he lived in Estonia for almost three years and covered the country’s 2011 parliamentary election for various news publications.