“Imagine going to a bank. Normally, there’s a reception desk at the bank that asks you, ‘What service are you looking for, sir or madam, today?’ If it’s a standard service, you’re directed to the first teller who’s available. If you need a special service you’re directed to a special office, special advisers. In a nutshell, that’s what [Elections Canada is] looking to build. That’s what the New Brunswick model is about,” Mr. Mayrand told the House Affairs Committee on May 28.
“It’s a system that’s centered on electors as opposed to polling stations, the benefit of it is it will reduce waiting times, especially at advance polls, where the lineup can build very quickly. I would think that would give better service to the elector, be a more efficient use of resources and probably fewer resources would be used in this mode,” he said.
Mr. Mayrand testified before the House Affairs Committee on May 28 to speak to Elections Canada’s $115.9-million spending estimates for 2013-2014.
Mr. Mayrand also talked about two Elections Canada reports following the 2011 federal election, including the March 27 report with recommendations on preventing the misuse of telecommunications technology, and the April 30 audit of the electoral process in 1,000 polls, conducted by former British Columbia chief electoral officer Harry Neufeld, which recommended that a “‘re-engineered’ implementation” of the New Brunswick model, federally, could “significantly improve” procedural accuracy in elections.
Mr. Mayrand said he’s unaware of any other electoral management body, “either here in Canada or around the world,” having conducted a post-event audit as Elections Canada has done.
The audit was commissioned by Elections Canada to examine procedural compliance in the 2011 federal election in the midst of the Supreme Court of Canada’s deliberations on former Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj’s appeal of a Federal Court decision, which upheld the 2011 electoral results in Etobicoke Centre, Ont., but found that administrative “voting irregularities” took place in the riding.
“More than 12 million Canadian citizens cast ballots on May 2, 2011, and the audit indicates that the applications of specific legal safeguards, in place to ensure each elector is actually eligible to vote, were seriously deficient in more than 165,000 cases due to systemic errors made by election officials. Averaged across 308 ridings, election officers made over 500 serious administrative errors per electoral district on Election Day,” reads the April 30 report.
Mr. Mayrand said he will be asking both the House and the Senate for approval to launch pilot projects to test out the new, proposed voting model, and said if the House and the Senate give “timely approval for the pilot,” Elections Canada could have the pilots designed and ready to go “for any byelection happening in early 2015 if there are any called.”
“I think it would be more prudent to test it in a federal election, either a byelection or even in a few ridings during the 2015 general election. I think we want to introduce technology at the polls also, and this needs to be fully tested before we ramp it through across the country,” said Mr. Mayrand.
Elections Canada is also trying to move voter registration and voter lists online, which would make it easier for voters to register themselves to vote and would mean that voter lists could be updated and changed in real time.
Mr. Mayrand said for the 2015 federal election he’s asking for full online registration with “live lists at the poll as a pilot project,” which could be expanded across the country in the 2019 general election.
“We really need to modernize our legislation. We’re out of sync with the times. It has not been looked at carefully. We need to bring it from the 19th to the 21st century. I mean that we need to start looking at the way the voting process is designed. We need to introduce technology to the system. Nowadays, I need signatures, documents, papers, and all of these sorts of things that are not aligned with the times. Canadians deal less and less with paper. They want to deal with us electronically,” he said.
The New Brunswick model was first used in New Brunswick’s 2008 province-wide, municipal elections, and provincially in 2010.
“The big thing is it provides much better service. The whole process can use less people, but the big thing is that it’s much faster and better service. It reduces bottlenecks at the polling locations and it makes the voting process much faster, and as well, it makes the training of polling officials much easier, because each polling official has fewer tasks to perform, so it’s easier to learn those tasks and so they make less mistakes,” said Mr. Quinn. “The first time we used it in 2008 we did exit polls at three of the biggest locations in three cities and we got a 95 per cent approval rate.”
Under the current voting model, an eligible voter would arrive at their polling location and line up at the assigned polling division. When it comes to their turn, a poll clerk checks the voter’s name and verifies the address on the list of electors. Once confirmed, the deputy returning officer hands the elector an initialled ballot and the voter moves behind a voting screen to vote. Once the ballot has been filled out, the voter hands it back to the deputy returning officer who verifies that it is the same initialed ballot. Once verified, the ballot goes in the box, and the voter’s name is checked off a paper list of electors by the poll clerk.
Under the New Brunswick voting model, an eligible voter would arrive at the polling location and line up in one of two streams. Electors with their voter cards and identification line up to have their voter card scanned and identity verified and are handed a token with their elector number and poll number. That voter then can line up at the first available ballot-issuing official and vote.
Electors without voter cards or other registration issues would line up in a second line to be sorted out by an official, who would ultimately issue them a token to vote. If Elections Canada gets the necessary approval and expands its online registration and voter lists, they could be used to sort out voters in the second stream.
In order to launch a pilot project, Elections Canada spokesperson John Enright said the chief electoral officer would first need to get consent from both the Procedure and House Affairs Committee and the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
The House Affairs Committee can decide for itself whether it wants to discuss Mr. Mayrand’s request to launch a pilot project.
Committee chair Conservative MP Joe Preston (Elgin-Middlesex-London, Ont.) said with a currently full slate, the committee would likely not have time to discuss such a request until the House returns next fall.
The Senate’s Legal Affairs Committee would be required to ask for the Senate Chamber’s permission to discuss Mr. Mayrand’s pilot project request.
As of publication, Mr. Enright said he was unable to confirm timing for when Mr. Mayrand will submit his requests for approval to the House and Senate.
NDP MP Craig Scott (Toronto Danforth, Ont.), his party’s democratic reform critic and a member of the House Affairs Committee, said Election’s Canada’s “decision to favour” the N.B. voting model is a “welcome” one.
“The report commissioned by Elections Canada made a good case for streamlining functions in a way that can be expected to reduce mistakes considerably,” said Mr. Scott in an email to The Hill Times.
In an email to The Hill Times, Cory Hann, director of communications to Democratic Reform Minister Tim Uppal (Edmonton-Sherwood Park, Alta.), said, “the minister has met with the chief electoral officer and discussed the recommendations he provided through the formal consultation process with the House of Commons,” referring to the March 27 and April 30 Elections Canada reports on the 2011 election.
“As the minister has always maintained, we’ll consider these recommendations. We committed to introducing legislation and we will introduce legislation,” wrote Mr. Hann in the email.
The House unanimously passed a motion calling on the government to introduce legislation to address the “robocalls” scandal within six months on March 12, 2012.
Mr. Hann said Mr. Uppal met with the chief electoral officer on Oct. 30, 2012, and on April 15, 2013. However, at his appearance on May 28, Mr. Mayrand said he hasn’t been consulted by Mr. Uppal on the government’s anticipated legislation, which Mr. Uppal has said will be a “comprehensive” elections reform.
Last week, Mr. Enright confirmed that Mr. Mayrand met with the government at “two brief meetings.” He said at the October meeting the chief electoral officer was told about the government’s plan to introduce “a comprehensive reform package [without specifics].”
He said at the April meeting, the government informed the chief electoral officer that they would be tabling legislation later that week, which did not happen. Mr. Enright said the meetings were “less than 30 minutes,” and that “no documents were shared.”
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: LAURA RYCKEWAERT
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