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By Justine Kelsie

Online voting could be the future of municipal elections

Mar 29, 2018 | 4:00 AM

Holding a municipal election is a big feat.

Lorna Harder, City Corporate Records Coordinator has been part of 13 City of Grande Prairie elections. She says there is a lot of legwork that goes into getting a new council and mayor at city hall.

“We start a year out. There is a lot of work involved. It is not simply getting the campaign material ready for candidates. It is also booking the voting stations which there are 19 of. It is hiring the staff and that’s just about 150 people. We have to get all of the stations ready for them and do training sessions,” explained Harder following a review presentation of the October 2017 Municipal Election.

On top of preparation, the election night is also a major amount of work. Harder says the automated vote counting equipment helps speed up the process, but there is still behind the scenes work that is done after councillors and the mayor are chosen. Voting stations need to be cleaned up and all the materials need to be collected.

With the amount of work that is put in before and after a local election, Harder finds it pretty disappointing that only a fraction of the population comes out to place a ballot in the box. In the most recent one, 22 per cent of eligible voters showed up to the polls.

“I don’t know why we have such a low turnout. I mean, to me, your municipal election is the most important because it is right in your backyard. You get a lot of people that call to complain, but they don’t turn out to vote.”

The Coordinator says not a lot has changed since working her first election.

“The biggest thing that has changed is the automated vote counting. Hopefully, in four years time or even 8 years time, we will be able to do online (voting), but the province isn’t on board,” she said.

The Local Authority Election Act would need to be amended by the province to run an election online. Harder thinks that, based on past census data, that there would be an increase in voters if the polls went to the world wide web.

“I think that is the way it is going, especially for the younger people. The older people will go to the station and vote. The younger people are on their iPhones and iPads and if they could vote straight from that, there would probably be a larger turnout,” said Harder.

The city gave the ability for people to answer census questions online two years ago and there were many people that opted for the online version of the survey, according to Harder. She says this points to how popular it may be for an election.

School voting stations will also be looked at for the next election in four years. To avoid having the public all over the halls, organizers might move the polls solely to community centres and churches instead. Harder and Returning Officer for the recent election Terri Williams say there haven’t been any issues in the past, but to avoid any future security or safety issues, they may look at moving them.

The next municipal election will be held in 2021.

by Justine Kelsie