Blame Etobicoke!
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/1...ection-because-theyre-not-bright-in-etobicoke
Thanks a lot, Etobicoke.
Bad apples spoiling the bunch is one thing — but Etobioke’s failure to properly supervise a simple election four years ago may add up to the most expensive case of incompetence in Canadian history, their rotten work literally tarnishing the voting system for all.
How expensive?
In Alberta, the fallout from the Toronto suburb’s ballot buffoonery in 2011 will add up to nearly $10 million in 2015, after the Prentice Tories called a general provincial election for May 5, the first since Etobicoke’s mistakes ended up in Canada’s Supreme Court.
“There’s a number of new initiatives that were taken into effect as a result of the Supreme Court decision, where they’d challenged the outcome of an election based on the poor quality of work done by the election officials, like not taking the oath properly or filling out forms properly,” said Drew Westwater of Elections Alberta.
“As a result of that Supreme Court case we’ve doubled the amount of training we provide to our staff in Alberta.”
Just three years ago, the same election cost Albertans $13.6 million.
In 2015 the election is slated to cost $23.5 million, out of the $28 million set aside by the provincial government in anticipation of the May vote.
Thanks so much, Etobicoke.
Problems in the west Toronto riding started after the May 2011 federal election, which saw Conservative MP Ted Opitz squeak past Liberal MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj by a 26 vote margin, spurring the loser to challenge the result over voting irregularities.
The court heard evidence of people being allowed to vote who weren’t on the list, and others casting votes in ridings where they didn’t live, and various other examples of ineptitude blamed on poor training of volunteers and temporary elections workers.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court let Opitz keep his seat, while pressuring Elections Canada to sort out the clerical errors that caused the whole kerfuffle.
Of course, that will mean more expensive federal elections too, and a report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer last month estimated a national vote later this year will cost Canadians $376 million, an increase of about 20 percent over 2011, which totalled $291 million.
But a chunk of that extra 20% expense is due to an extra 30 ridings on the electoral map, making the near 100% increase in the Elections Alberta budget for the same 87 ridings and only 13,000 more registered voters over last time appear excessive.
Westwater puts the extra $10 million down to increased training hours, a new online training program, and extra workers.
“We’ve doubled the amount of training we provide, we’ve developed and built an online training program to supplement the classroom, and we’re training everybody in advance now, not just certain officials,” said Westwater.
“We’re giving everyone two-and-a-half hours of classroom training, plus the online session, which is about an hour.”
As well, Westwater says there is more staff at each polling station, “to help electors get through the process quickly, and to ensure the work is done accurately and correctly.”
He says Etobicoke’s errors have Alberta determined to improve the voting system at home, to ensure no voting result is ever tainted by similar accusations.
“The ramification is, it has improved the quality of work being done,” said Westwater.
“You’re talking about people who work one day every four years, and human error does creep in — we’re trying to eliminate it.”
Of course, any time costs double to the tune of $10 million, you’re going to have questions — and Scott Hennig, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, says the extra expense does raise eyebrows.
“It does seem like a large increase, just for training — especially when you only have a small increase in the number of voters and no new ridings,” he said.
The same sentiments will likely be echoed across the province, but ultimately citizens have to trust Elections Alberta that $10 million is the cost of avoiding a messy legal battle like the one in west Toronto.
At what cost voter confidence? It’s an expensive question forced on the whole country by incompetence in one federal riding.
Thanks a lot, Etobicoke.
