Alberta elections slammed
Ian | 17 September, 2008 | 12:00This past election in Alberta featured record low voter turnout (40%), and now the chief electoral officer has released a report on what the government needs to do to restore democracy in this province.
But first on of the problems:
Lorne Gibson’s report counted 257,176 people who showed up on election day and discovered they were not registered — 27 per cent of all March 3 voters.
Basically, the government claims it didn’t have the time or money to hire enumerators in this province to actually figure out who lived here so that they could have voter lists on election day.
Another issue was that the returning officers were appointed by the Tories. This potentially led to polls being strategically chosen to make it difficult to vote for certain populations.
Among the 182 recommendations are non-partisan returning officers (hired by Elections Alberta) and fixed elections dates.
Unfortunately the government is dragging its draconian heels again:
“We’ll be making a review of the full 182 recommendations and responding in due time,” said Justice Minister Alison Redford.
“We don’t want to respond individually until we’ve had a chance to look at the full report and to ensure that before we make any changes that we have ensured that people’s fundamental rights to democracy are protected.”
She said the government has already begun reviewing some recommendations — such as allowing Elections Alberta to hire returning officers who would not be appointed directly by the government — because Gibson outlined them earlier in a 2006 report.
“It was more a question of timing and the legislative schedule as to why we didn’t respond,” Redford said.
“I’m not saying that we will be responding fully, but we will be reviewing them all.”
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I worked in a Millwoods riding as a poll clerk on that election day, and I have to say, it was the worst system, and very questionable in terms of validity.
If you were a registered voter, you didn’t need ID, you just had to confirm that the address I just read out to you was yours, meaning that anyone could vote for anyone else as long as they knew their name and that they weren’t voting.
If you weren’t registered, you went through the process and only needed one piece of ID with you name on it. Not government issued – they accepted library cards, credits cards and city rec cards.
Finally, the amount of scrutineers. While this is operated in conjunction with the parties, it is safe to say that my location didn’t need 6 Conservative scrutineers, 1 NDP scrutineer that came and went throughout the day, and 2 Liberal scrutineers. Oh, I forgot – the Conservative poster that was in the park, right by the main road, of the school I was working in, in violation of the voting bylaws. I only heard afterwords that my deputy returning officer was part of the Conservative party.
Needless to say, it was one big clusterfuck.