‘Perfect storm’ blamed for snarling civic election

Official vows problems that pushed some voters away won’t be repeated

The head organizer of Calgary’s municipal election promises voters they won’t face another “perfect storm” of ballot shortages, long lineups and crashing websites in the next election.

Laura Kennedy, returning officer and city clerk, vows to implement several changes, including electronic tabulators, to prevent a repeat of last year’s frustration, which saw some voters walk away from polling stations during a higher-than-average turnout.

An audit of last fall’s election found that 57 per cent of regular voting stations in 2017 were short of councillor ballots and 47 per cent required additional school trustee ballots.

Some polling stations waited for more than six hours for elections workers to resupply ballots, with some stations requiring multiple deliveries.

“It was a perfect storm,” said Kennedy. “Systems failed; they failed and our mitigation on those systems was not successful,” she told an audit committee Wednesday.

Kennedy, who had been in the role for just three months at the time of the Oct. 16 election, resisted blaming colleagues more involved in planning for the vote and instead offered a mea culpa:

“Ultimately, the returning officer by legislation is responsible. So I took this very seriously,” Kennedy said. “I was fairly new to Calgary (at the time of the election), but I know we can do it differently. I know we can do it better, I know we can do it smarter and we’re going to. The next vote will show that.”

Council’s audit committee heard that a new “decentralized” distribution method for ballots will prevent what occurred in 2017 from happening again.

Next election, each voting station will have 100 per cent of the ballots they require on the morning of the vote. If additional ballots are required, they will be dispatched from backup ballot supply locations spread across the city, rather than from the election office in northeast Calgary.

Kennedy said she couldn’t account for why some stations waited for more than six hours to be resupplied but said plans are in place to ensure it won’t happen again.

“Getting ballots to the voting stations in a timely fashion from one location in Calgary during rush hour does not work,” she said. “So we had to change that.”

Audit committee members offered relatively few questions or criticisms in response to the election report.

Outside council chambers, audit chair Evan Woolley said some of the good work done to improve turnout ahead of the last election was spoiled somewhat by the problems on voting day.

“It kind of defeated the purpose when we saw Calgarians be frustrated, and rightly so, with long lineups and not enough ballots and some things that we should know and we have been successful in delivering in past elections,” Woolley said.

“What we saw on election night was a number of procedures and processes that broke down that really shouldn’t have.”

The city clerk will return to council Sept. 24 with detailed plans and a budget request to improve Calgary’s vote procedures ahead of the 2021 election.

Kennedy said she is reviewing the location and accessibility of polling stations with the assistance of Elections Alberta.

The effort could address one of the more concerning findings of the auditor’s report that criticized long wait times at the city’s two so-called “superstations” — voting stations that serve upwards of 10,000 electors — that led to some residents in Auburn Bay and Evanston to abandon plans to vote.

“Incident reports received by the elections office during election day indicated some voters were deterred from voting at the two superstations due to long voter wait times or car access issues,” the auditor wrote.

“At Auburn Bay and Evanston, 30 and 31 per cent of enumerated electors voted on election day, compared to the overall ward voter turnout of 40 and 44 per cent respectively.”

The city auditor has set a deadline of Sept. 30, 2019, for all of the concerns raised in the report to be addressed, though some changes could come much sooner.

Kennedy has already sought council’s approval to begin the procurement process for electronic tabulators that are expected to help speed the reporting of results.

Among the other changes Kennedy hopes to introduce in a multi-year election improvement program are assistance at polling stations for the visually or hearing impaired, additional supports for non-English speakers and more accessible polling stations when it comes to parking and wheelchairs.