By Taylor MacPherson

Electronic counting made for smooth elections: returning officer

Oct 27, 2016 | 1:52 PM

Prince Albert’s top elections official said she was impressed with the electronic vote counting system used in last night’s election.

“It was quite a simple process,” Returning Officer Sherry Person told paNOW. “I think it takes out the human error in counting the ballots.”

Electronic counting was used across P.A. for the first time during the Oct. 26 elections. Person said the electronic counting system was first tested as a pilot project in Ward 5 in 2009. Based on the success of the pilot, Person said she made the decision to implement the system city-wide when she became returning officer.

According to Person, the same system is used in Saskatoon and Regina.

“I just thought it would be great for the City of Prince Albert to start using electronic vote counting,” she said. “I thought the voters would appreciate it.”

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Person said she was not aware of any issues with the new system, and anticipates using it again in future elections, along with other new technologies.

“I would hope that we could use the system, or something different that comes out,” Person said. “I know there’s been comments about Internet voting and things like that. We would be up to look at any options that were available.”

One nice feature of the electronic counting, Person said, is it allows ballots to be counted by hand if the system should fail.

“If the machines wouldn’t have worked we would have simply just put the ballots in the boxes and then we would have counted those ballots at the end of the night manually,” she said.

Person said last night’s elections went smoothly overall, with no major issues arising.

“I had excellent staff working the polls that definitely assisted,” Person said. “I obviously have very good staff here in the city clerk’s office.”

“I was happy with the way the election process worked,” she said.

Taylor.macpherson@jpbg.ca

@TMacPhersonNews