Elections Alberta rules out electronic vote counters for 2019 election
New electronic vote counters speedily delivered the results in last week’s Calgary-Lougheed byelection but they won’t be used in the 2019 provincial vote, says Elections Alberta.
And in fact, new rules may mean vote results in the next election come in slightly slower than in the past, the independent agency said Monday.
As a pilot project, Elections Alberta used electronic vote tabulators that automatically count the paper ballots — keeping the results secret until polls are closed — in the Dec. 14 Calgary-Lougheed vote that saw United Conservative Party Leader Jason Kenney gain a legislature seat.
Using the machines, a large number of results were out within five minutes of the polls closing at 8 p.m., with the majority out by 8:20.
Pamela Renwick, spokeswoman for Elections Alberta, said that from the agency’s perspective the experiment — which also included the use of electronic pollbooks to speed up the actual voting process — went “really well.”
However, actually utilizing the machines in 2019 would require both a change to legislation and more lead time for implementation, she said.
“We learned a lot about how we can continue to improve our training and our software to allow it to work well, but going forward we would probably look at more of a phased-in approach,” she said.
“We wouldn’t be looking at rolling it out full-scale in a general election all at once.”
Elections Alberta estimates that it would cost $4.4 million to use the machines for all polls in a provincial election, $1.4 million if they were used only at advanced polls. The 2015 provincial election cost taxpayers $19 million.
In the fall sitting of the provincial legislature that concluded last week, the NDP government passed Bill 32, which made a series of amendments to the Election Act but did not change the law to allow the use of the electronic voting tabulators.
Christina Gray, the NDP’s minister responsible for democratic renewal, was not made available for an interview.
But in a statement, a spokeswoman for the minister said the government contemplated putting a provision into Bill 32 that would allow the tabulators.
“However, after careful consideration and consultation we decided not to move forward with their mass implementation at this time,” said Samantha Fulmer in an email.
“We will continue to monitor this technology to determine if the benefits outweigh the significant cost, but at this time ballots will continue to be counted as they always have been.”
One change in Bill 32 may contribute to slowing down the vote count in the next provincial election.
The legislation allows for Albertans to vote at any advanced poll station across the province, not just in the ones located in their home ridings.
However, all those ballots have to be returned to the Elections Alberta central office for sorting and counting.
“So that process, we have to determine what exactly it will look like but there’s a potential there for increased timelines because we need to get all those ballots before we can sort and count them. If we’re waiting for 8 p.m. election night to start counting all those ballots, it can take time depending on how much uptake we have.”