Canada’s and (in my particular experience) BC's voting systems are secure and resilient.
This election saw many close cut riding including my home riding of Juan de Fuca Malahat. The closeness, combined with an acrimonious campaign is, I presume, why so many people have been making comments and takes of “stolen elections” and suggesting fraud. This is a dangerous thing indeed. We already have low voter turnout; reducing the legitimacy of our elections can only cause problems and increase the potential of violence.
Are there problems? Yes. Is it corrupted? Not at this time. Are there sufficient checks to ensure accuracy? Yes -- if we take advantage of them.
You may be asking… who am I to be making these grandiose claims?
I have been involved in many aspects of our political systems both as a candidate (Sooke Municipal 2022, BC DLN 2024) and volunteer on campaign teams in many elections. I’ve never been an employee or otherwise received money from Elections BC, Elections Canada or any electoral organizations. I will be talking predominantly about BC, but most things are equally valid for Elections Canada.
# Let's talk about the problems
On a semi-regular schedule, but with the potential to occur with limited warning - especially with minority governments on a grand scale, but anytime for a by-election, workload dramatically changes. It would be a major waste of public funds to always have all of the employees required to run an election full time employed. So the long standing system has been to have core staff, and then in the lead up to election a big burst of hiring and training, then having increased staff through the election period, and on actual voting days massively increased staff. Voting day staff get trained in a hurry - and have to know a lot. A lot of the temporary hires are either retirees or students, the students generally have zero experience, in ideal cases at least some of the retirees have done it previously.
I personally think there is a fairly good balance currently between cost saving, training time, and numbers of long term employees. If we wanted to reduce errors in initial counting, the most effective thing would be to increase long term employment with both the relevant election bodies.
Do errors happen in initial counts? Absolutely. I personally have stopped errors from occurring at least 4 times - one time at a polling station to the point of demanding that a box be reopened and recounted after it was closed but the attached forms were incorrectly filled out. How did I do that? Candidate representatives can do that also political party representatives and candidates.
The move to electronic counting - but importantly still using and keeping paper ballots - should increase speed and reduce errors (and is adjusting some roles). But candidate and political party representatives are still critical to ensuring representation at the polling station/count, preventing errors and ensuring a fair election.
Not all candidates or parties send representatives to all polling stations or all polling days especially with advance voting. In particular, despite serving multiple times in Federal elections, I’ve yet to see a Conservative representative; last Federal election at my polling place there was NDP, PPC and Green representatives - no Liberal or Conservative. Provincially, I have only seen NDP, BC Liberal and Green representatives before this election. Despite the obvious policy differences, I’ve always had a great experience and worked together with the other representatives to effectively divvy responsibilities when there have been fewer representatives per party than ballot boxes in a polling location.
So, in summary, a few ballots being missed in a few locations on initial count? Very non-surprising - but could be reduced by more candidates/parties sending trained representatives. A whole ballot box being misplaced, is a major oops and is not the norm, but I have no qualms that it was an isolated and likely accidental situation rather than systemic corruption.
Additionally, as a candidate, I have found that the Elections BC returning officers - the heads of the riding level elections - are very communicative and very detailed in their communications.
I’ll close this out with both a challenge and an offer for anyone who felt unsure of the count or the electoral system.
# A challenge & an offer
The challenge:
- Get involved!
- Read all of the election documentation from Elections BC or Elections Canada as relevant.
- Refresh your understanding of civics - which is both under taught and oft forgotten.
The offer:
Next election - likely the federal General Election - I will be involved, whether as a candidate representative or a candidate I’ll have to decide as we get closer but I’ll be involved. Join me as a candidate representative at a local polling place. Regardless of what party you support, I’ll answer any questions I can and help you get accredited. That way you can help increase the quality of the count and put yourself at ease.
Don’t scream fire in a crowded electoral landscape. Serve as a fire guard.
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