Thursday, July 11, 2019 ~ VICTORIA, BC
~ West Shore Voice News
New technology at provincial voting stations could soon be in the works toward first-use in the next scheduled provincial general election on October 16, 2021, says Elections BC.
A letter from BC Attorney General David Eby dated July 3 — indicating the BC government’s intention to introduce legislation to act on the voting modernization recommendations in the Report of the CEO on Recommendations for Legislative Change 2018 — was released to media today July 11 by Elections BC.
The changes would include the use of electronic poll-books for real-time strike-off (instead of doing that by pen and paper) and ballot tabulators for efficient and faster counting (instead of counting by hand).
Elections BC is preparing to implement the legislative changes should they proceed, with a plan to implement modernized voting during the next scheduled provincial general election on October 16, 2021.
“Elections BC is pleased that the Attorney General’s office is moving forwarded with some of our recommendations for legislative change to improve elections in BC,” said Anton Boegman, BC’s Chief Electoral Officer.
“Should voting modernization be adopted, it will improve the voting experience for British Columbians, make voting faster, improve accessibility, speed up results, and provide candidates with current participation information to assist them in their efforts to get out the vote,” Boegman was quoted in the Elections BC release.
Elections BC says: “BC will be incorporating best practices from other jurisdictions that have introduced new voting technologies. The systems will need to be adapted to meet British Columbia’s ‘vote anywhere’ model.”
In a report issued by the Chief Electoral Office on Recommendations for Legislative Change (May 2018) to the BC government, there were four priority recommendations but also challenges “largely technical in nature” that cause “recurring business problems for Elections BC and/or our stakeholders”.
The four priority issues and recommendations were:
- Facilitating youth participation ( provisional voter registration for 16- and 17-year-olds);
- Access to data sources (greater access to personal information from other available databases, such as name, address, date of birth);
- Trialing new voting technologies and modernizing the voting process (such as electronic poll-books for real-time strike-off and reporting, and ballot tabulators);
- On-demand election calendar (asking for a 36-day election period instead of 29-days).
Technical or procedural recommendations had to do with how to process registration of voters who will turn 18 on or before General Voting Day (after the writ is dropped) and voting areas beyond the main voting station being called ‘site-based voting areas’ instead of ‘special’. Also dealing with the specifics of an individual assisting a vote-by-mail voter; absentee ballots not placed in secrecy and certification envelopes before being placed in
ballot box (s. 120 (1)); rejection of secrecy envelopes containing more than one ballot; and access to strata properties for canvassing purposes.