Polling stations work better than internet voting

Ontario PC election shows drawbacks of system, writes Christine Whitaker.

It seems the recent Ontario Progressive Conservative leadership election was beset with several problems, but the most frequent complaint was many members did not receive their internet PIN number by mail in time to vote.

This certainly happened to a friend in Ontario who was disgruntled because he could not vote.

I suspect many members of that party may receive their mailed information some time in the coming week. The problem would seem to be with Canada Post rather than with the party organization.

Similar problems occurred here during the Saskatchewan Party leadership election in January.

My household had two votes. Our ballots arrived just before Christmas. We filled them out and attached all the required identification, but decided not to mail them until after the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The deadline for ballots to reach the party office in Regina was 5 p.m. on Jan. 26. We put ours in a mailbox on Victoria Avenue in the early afternoon of Jan. 2.

Candidates had access to the lists of members whose ballots had been received, and were checking regularly to see if their supporters voted. On Jan. 11, the candidate we were supporting phoned to ask us to mail in our ballots. We replied that we had done so nine days previously. Repeated inquiries at the party office finally revealed that our ballots were received on Jan. 15.

It had taken Canada Post 13 days to move two pieces of mail approximately halfway across the city.

Since that election, I have wondered how many ballots, mailed a week or 10 days before the deadline, may have been delivered to the party office too late to be counted.

There are lessons to be learned for political parties that need to hold an internal vote.

The Ontario experience shows internet voting has too many glitches, and reliance on Canada Post seems questionable at best.

The obvious solution is for a party to set up polling stations within each riding, where members must go to vote in person, and where every candidate may have scrutineers present.

Larger ridings could have more than one polling place, and they should be open for a few days to give every member the opportunity to vote.

At the end of voting, all the unopened ballot boxes would then be transported to the party office for counting.

It is to be hoped that Elections Canada does not attempt to introduce internet voting any time soon. If government computers cannot even get their payroll systems to work properly, what on Earth might they do with internet voting ? It would likely be supreme chaos.

The tried-and-tested, old-fashioned method is still the most reliable. You go to a polling station and submit your ID. The poll workers cross your name off the list, you receive your ballot, mark it in secrecy, and it is placed in the ballot box.

Candidates’ representatives are able to monitor the proceedings, and to watch the count at the end of the day. Everything is transparent. There is, however, one problem with our system. Elections Canada does not seem to be able to get the voters’ lists right. I have been the deputy returning officer at my home poll for six federal elections. On each occasion there have been too many errors.

People were assigned to the wrong poll, or sometimes even to the wrong constituency.

But at least the poll workers have maps and are able to direct people to the right place. In the final analysis, real people running an election do a better job than any computer seems able to do. Whitaker lives in Edgeley.