There is something deeply troubling about the way Alberta is conducting its upcoming referendum. On October 19th, we will be voting on not one, but 10 questions. Today, my mail-in ballot arrived in the mail. Turns out it is 10 separate ballots.
10 Separate ballots.
For anyone that has ever worked as an election worker, it is normally one ballot per person. While I believe that our elections system is honest and fair, I am actually one of those people that would prefer hand counting over the electric automated tabulators. I just trust my neighbours over machines, that is all.
But this time it is different. What we are doing here is the same work as 10 elections. Elections Alberta says 45 million ballots will be printed, and they expect 34 million ballots will be used. They are saying they need 60,000 workers. I can't even begin to tell you how big that is. By comparison, there were 1.78 million votes cast in the last provincial election.
This isn't just a referendum, this is an enormous ballot processing operation and the public expects it to be over by the end of the night with results in hand. This is impossible. It will not happen. Elections Alberta has never done anything close to this before. They even said it is a "colossal undertaking."
Each question/ballot will be counted independently on referendum day. Now imagine having to separate them, count them, verify them, deal with rejected or questionable ballots, record the totals, have scrutineers observe the process, seal the materials, report the numbers and then start the process again for another question. We have trouble getting that done for ONE question by the end of an election night, and we are going to process 10? I don't think so.
At this scale, accuracy comes into play. The more ballots you process manually, the more opportunities there are for mistakes, recounts, disagreements over ballot validity and simple human fatigue. The system that Elections Alberta has been given will result in grossly delayed results, which in turn will result in allegations of vote rigging, magically suitcases of ballots, etc etc. Whichever side loses, they will say it is rigged.
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