Tabulators that made headlines in NB to be widely used in civic elections

CP24.com
Oct. 4, 2014
By Chris Fox

The vote tabulating machines that were at the centre of a glitch-filled New Brunswick election last month will be in wide use across the GTA on Oct. 27 but municipal officials say they are confident the technology won’t make any headlines here.

The Sept. 22 vote in New Brunswick marked the first time that tabulating machines were used to count ballots in a provincial election and many blamed the equipment for slow returns that left the result of the election hanging in the balance until well after midnight.

A subsequent investigation by provider Dominion Voting Systems did, however, determined that the issue was related to the use of unapproved software to disseminate results to the media and not the machines themselves. Subsequent recounts in a number of ridings also upheld the results.

“I think people were mixing apples with oranges (in the aftermath of the New Brunswick election). They were mixing the results of the tabulator with the additional mechanism that had been used to report the results of the votes from each of the locations,” City of Vaughan Clerk Jeffrey Abrams told CP24.com. “The fact is these tabulators have been here a long time. People have on occasion made complaints and what I have seen time and time again is that the tabulator has been shown to be accurate.”

Though the use of vote tabulators is relatively new in provincial elections, the machines have been common in municipal elections for a number of years now with Mississauga, Toronto, Vaughan and Brampton among the many cities to use them.

The attraction with the machines, Abrams said, is their ability to “enfranchise voters,” whether that be by giving voters a second chance if they accidentally spoil their ballot or by allowing them to vote at any advanced poll and not just at one in their ward, something Abrams said would have been “risky” to allow without the machines.

This year, Abrams said, there will even be an advanced poll outside of Vaughan at York University.

“The entire process is about enfranchising voters. It isn’t about me and making my jobs easier and it is not about getting results out real quick so the media can report it like a horse race,” Abrams told CP24.com “It is about getting the vote right and making sure there is proper representation.”

Vaughan started using the vote tabulator machines in 2006, however the City of Toronto was an even earlier adopter, first using the technology in the 2000 municipal election.

Speaking with CP24 on Thursday, City of Toronto elections Director Bonita Pietrangelon said she has “full confidence” in the technology, despite the recent controversy in New Brunswick.

“We do a lot of testing before we deploy the equipment. Every single tabulator goes through extensive testing,” she said. “We test it to make sure it works with the ballot, that each candidate can receive a vote and that the equipment is tallying the votes correctly and then we do thorough end-to-end testing, including with our results system.”

Because the machines keep track of the votes throughout the day and then print a tally for the returning officer, Pietrangelon said Toronto residents will be able to see results "almost immediately" after the polls close on Oct. 27.