By Sarah Stone

Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation curbs voter fraud with new technology

Apr 8, 2013 | 6:09 AM

The Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation has the final list of chief and council nominees for their April 17 election and voters can expect something a little different this election.

To help curb band members from casting a ballot more than once across the eight communities in the First Nation, the head electoral officer Randy Clarke said they’ll start tracking voters electronically.

“It’s for security reasons we’re taking this year because we had a few complaints of people voting [twice],” Clarke said.

In 2011 band members were frustrated and concerned that some voters committed fraud at the polls, during the election of Darrell McCallum. He beat out Harold Linklater by only nine votes.

“We’re using computers, interacting all the computers for seven sites because Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation has probably eight communities all together and there’s also urban members,” he said.

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The First Nation is one of the largest in the province with more 10,000 band members who mostly live in eight communities throughout northeast Saskatchewan. Out of those members, more than 5,000 are eligible to vote in the upcoming April 17 election.

“This is the first time we’re doing it this year,” he said, explaining they used to use hardcopies at every polling station and bring them together at the end to determine who and how many people voted.

“Over the years the people have been moving to cities, so some people will go home and vote and some people will stay in the city and vote. When we get this general list like we don’t know exactly where everybody is voting, but this year we want to make sure that nobody votes twice.”

Clarke said this process will also prove to be faster and require fewer funds.

“It’s actually a pretty secure site that we’re using … we’re working with Prince Albert Grand Council IT Services to get this program of tracking or keeping data of all the people that are voting this year,” he said, adding he didn’t want to go in depth about the program until the election is over.

“I think it’s pretty safe. We’re trying out to see if it works and hopefully it works. I think it will do the job that we’re setting out to do [which] is to make sure nobody votes again, it’ll be very effective that way.”

All the nominations for council and chief were submitted on April 3.

The Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation consists of eight communities, including Amisk Lake, Deschaumbault Lake, Kinoosao, Pelican Narrows, Prince Albert, Sandy Bay, Southend and Sturgeon Landing.

sstone@panow.com

On Twitter: @sarahstone84