A recent report from Elections Canada is seeking parliamentary approval to conduct tests on e-voting. This, in turn, has reignited the long-standing debate over the risks and benefits of e-voting.

As one who has worked on both e-government issues and public engagement for a long time, I read some of these exchanges with consternation. I’m mystified that so many people who ought to know better still look to e-voting as a way to respond to falling voter turnout and possibly to re-engage the public, especially youth.

This confuses the symptoms with the disease.

Falling voter turnout has, I submit, little to do with access – whatever people may say in response to surveys. The more likely reason is that fewer and fewer people regard voting as a meaningful exercise. E-voting will hardly change that.

So why do these people keep talking about it as a solution to the problem? Part of the reason is that they want easy solutions to hard problems. But it is more than that. There is a seductive view out there that new technologies contain new solutions to old problems.

More specifically, there is widespread belief that new technologies are inherently democratizing. They are thought to possess a “transformative force” that is propelling us into a new and more democratic future. The discussion around how new technologies will affect politics abounds with claims about making government more transparent, empowering citizens, and giving rise to new forms of participatory democracy.

In fact, new technologies are no more inherently democratizing than they are natural instruments of command-and-control. If we want to use them to strengthen or renew our democracy, the first step is to shake ourselves free of this romanticized view of them. This starts by distinguishing more clearly between technology as a driver, an enabler, and a solution.

First, new technologies are a huge historical driver of change. Our society – indeed, the world – is already radically different from the one many of us grew up in. Once the genie was out of the bottle, the information age was all but certain. So, yes, there is the whiff of historical inevitably about these things.

But we now know a lot about the “inevitable” part of this new world – the effect the technology has as a driver. It is making our world far more interdependent and complex. While this has far-reaching implications for democracy and governance, it is quite compatible with authoritarian forms of government, not just democratic ones.

Second, new technologies are an astonishingly powerful enabler. They allow us to do all kinds of things on a scale we could scarcely contemplate before, and with a speed we thought belonged only to science fiction. They also allow us to do new things, such as model climate change.

But for all that, they are only tools – indifferent to their purpose. They can as well be used for mass control as for mass enlightenment. They are a means to an end. Before putting them to use, it is the end we must concentrate on.

This brings us to solutions. Technology can certainly help us solve issues. But we should resist looking to it as a source of solutions (at least not for problems like falling voter turn-out).

That problem has a complex social history. It includes the antiquated nature of our 19th-century institutions, the growing complexity and interdependence of our society, and the erosion of traditional forms of social cohesion – such as small towns, shared ethnicity, lower levels of education and a more deferential political culture.

The solution to the problem of falling voter-turnout lies here. The technology will surely play a role in it. But there is no quick, technological fix. The way forward is a difficult one, involving reflection, dialogue, and adjustment.

Indeed, even if e-voting raises the level of voter participation – which it may – there is a risk this could backfire. Populism is an ever-present threat for democracies and our weakened civic culture makes us especially vulnerable to it. E-voting could give rise to a whole new and frightening form of populism by degenerating into referendum madness or even push-button democracy.

I am not opposed to e-voting. In fact, I’m for it. As Elections Canada rightly notes, it can solve some practical problems with regard to access.

But the idea that we should do it to respond to the decline in voter turnout is simply a red herring that draws attention away from the real issues. Whatever we decide about e-voting, the challenge of an increasingly disengaged public will remain. The real challenge for government is to take this bull by the horns.