City to take plebiscite vote with electronic tabulators
When Calgarians cast their ballots in next week’s Olympic plebiscite, they will deposit them into one of the more than 220 electronic tabulator machines the city has in place to tally the results of the vote.
Calgarians will be asked on Nov. 13 whether they are for or against Calgary hosting the 2026 Winter Olympic Games — though voting has already commenced through a mail-in ballot. Advance voting will also take place Tuesday and Wednesday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The city has already received more than 5,000 mail-in ballots, a municipal record, says the city’s returning officer.
“We are ready for Calgarians to vote. We have been ready since we started the mail-in ballots on Oct. 1,” said Laura Kennedy. “We are staffed. We have provided additional staff at all of our voting stations. We have on-call staff we are now training.
“We are hoping this vote is a better experience for voters and for the campaigns.”
The city has pursued a number of reforms to the process aimed at increasing ease and accessibility in the wake of a disastrous 2017 municipal election that saw ballot shortages and long lineups.
The Olympic plebiscite will feature longer poll hours, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Voting stations will be better staffed and stocked with 100 per cent of the ballots required for eligible voters in the area. New accessible voting machines will allow persons with visual, auditory or motor impairment to cast a ballot independently at the advance polls on Nov. 6 and 7.
The city will also conduct a vote on Nov. 13 at hospitals and for homeless persons. And for the first time, Calgarians will have their ballots counted by electronic tabulator machines — the same ones used by most municipalities in the province.
Voters will mark their ballots as usual and then insert it into the tabulator. One of the key advantages of the technology is that it provides immediate confirmation that a vote has been counted. The machine can also alert a voter if there has been an irregular marking or spoiling of the ballot to ensure that that was their intention.
More than 220 tabulator machines will be spread across 160 voting locations.
“You’ll see the vote tabulator will go up by one vote when it receives a ballot that is valid,” Kennedy said. “Voters will know if there is a problem with their ballot. That is the most significant difference: they will know their vote has been counted before they leave the voting station.”
Kennedy also addressed hypothetical concerns raised about the possibility of Calgarians voting twice in the plebiscite. It’s illegal to vote more than once in an election, she said, and the same provincial rules around eligibility that have applied in the past three elections will also apply to the vote on the Olympics.
A list of everyone who has requested a mail-in ballot will be available at the regular and advance polling stations. The list will be available to scrutineers and election workers to review. Anyone suspected of having voted twice will be investigated.
“I’m really challenged by this line because as an election provider we work really hard and diligently to have people participate once,” Kennedy said. “That’s what the legislation allows and that’s what we work for. My team has been working diligently for months to make sure this happens. I would discourage anyone from doing that.”
The results of the plebiscite are expected to be released around 10 p.m. on Nov. 13. A ward-by-ward breakdown of the vote will be released on Nov. 15.