PROPOSED CHANGES WOULD HASTEN ELECTION RESULTS
Votes would be counted more quickly and completely on election night in B.C. if the province adopts the parting recommendations of former chief electoral officer Keith Archer.
Archer’s modernization proposals are similar to ones already adopted in Ontario, where the winning majority for premier-designate Doug Ford was confirmed within 15 minutes of the polls closing Thursday night.
No fun for election night pundits. They were barely getting warmed up when the leaders began lining up to deliver their speeches.
More important for B.C., the Archer recommendations would eliminate the need for a lengthy delay in counting absentee ballots, which meant a 15-day gap between election day and the final count here last year. Instead, all votes would be counted and reported on election night.
The big-time savings would arise from the scanning and electronic tabulation of ballots on election night, coupled with centralized counting once all the votes are in the system.
Other technological innovations would allow “vote anywhere” access for all voters at any polling station in the province. For those voting absentee, on-site printing would allow elections officers to produce the necessary paper ballot for any riding in the province.
Despite the use of technology to compile and tally the votes, this should not be mistaken for proposals to vote online.
“The report of the B.C. independent panel on internet voting identified significant security risks with internet voting, and we have not seen evidence that such risks have been sufficiently addressed,” writes Archer.
Voting would still be in person. And though registration would be verified by an electronic list, voters would still be marking paper ballots.
Here’s Archer’s description of how the new system could work:
“Voters will still go to a voting place. Upon entering, they will be greeted by an information officer and directed to the next available station for service.
“An election official with access to the provincial voters’ list through an electronic poll book will then provide all of the check-in services necessary to issue a ballot, including voter identification, registration, eligibility, current address and electoral district.
“After checking in, the voter will be issued an unfolded, paper ballot and a privacy sleeve. Voting screens will be available for voters to mark their ballots in secret.
“Voters will deliver the marked ballot in the privacy sleeve to an official at the tabulator, where the ballot will be scanned. The result will be stored electronically in the tabulator.”
Once scanned, the votes would be automatically tabulated by electoral district, uploaded into central servers, then counted and reported starting within mere minutes of the polls closing on election day.
But the voter-marked paper ballots will be stored in ballot boxes should the electronic count be challenged or an audit be required.
New Brunswick adopted a version of the system several years back and after some initial glitches continues to use it. Ontario tried out the system for a byelection in 2016 and, after a “flawless” shakedown, went all in this week.
From the Elections B.C. summary of the advantages for B.C: “Accessible to all voters including those with disabilities, serves voters efficiently and makes effective use of tax dollars, promotes compliance with procedures that ensure electoral integrity, produces timely, accurate and trusted results, provides timely and accessible voter participation information to candidates.”
The latter is a reference to a feature that would allow registered political parties access to the voters who have already voted, enabling them to concentrate their get-outthe-vote efforts on those who have not yet done so.
The Archer report estimates implementation costs for B.C. at $11 million, mainly for state-of-the-art technology. Savings over the following two general elections are estimated at $14 million, mainly in staffing and other resources.
This at a time when the province is contemplating a change to a new electoral system based on proportional representation, a prospect Archer acknowledges in his report.
“The modernization principles and approach to voting administration presented here would apply to any electoral system that British Columbians may choose in the 2018 referendum,” he wrote.
“The framework used to establish voting and counting processes operates independently from how votes translate into seats in the legislative assembly. This proposal focuses on when and where voters can vote, how ballots in voting places are provided to voters, how we ensure voters only vote once, and the processes for counting ballots and reporting results.”
The expedited voting and counting would have added advantages under proportional representation, which is more complicated than the current system and less likely to produce majority governments.
Enough that it can take weeks after an election to sort out a governing coalition without also having to wait for the seat count to be finalized.
But time is a wasting. Archer recommends that an all-party committee review the necessary changes in the Election Act, which would then be adopted by the legislature as a whole.
Once the enabling legislation is in place, Archer estimates Elections B.C., now under his recently named successor (and former deputy) Anton Boegman, would require 18 to 24 months to implement the new voting model.
On that expectation, the New Democrats would need to get moving later this year or early next, to be sure the new model is in place in time for the election scheduled for October 2021.
Voters will deliver the marked ballot in the privacy sleeve to an official at the tabulator, where the ballot will be scanned (and the) result stored. KEITH ARCHER, former B.C. chief electoral officer