Thursday’s vote in the Calgary-Lougheed riding byelection wasn’t just a test for the candidates. It was also a test of a new technology that may some day become the normal way to cast a ballot.
The new system includes electronic poll books to help check in voters at polling stations. It includes voting tabulators to count the paper ballots. It includes voter-assisted terminals which allow people with physical disabilities t0 vote independently.
Pamela Renwick, director of operations and communications with Elections Alberta, says the agency wants to try these devices to see if they can make the whole process of voting and counting ballots more efficient.
“We were able to move people through the stations pretty quickly,” she told me. “The full counting process was completed about an hour after the polls closed. It was a really good test of the software in one riding. The challenge will be to analyze outcomes and see if we are ready for a province-wide election.”
It’s not likely to be the next provincial election in 2019.
“I think this is something that will have to be phased in,” Renwick told me. “We may try to use the technology for the advance polls only in the next provincial election. That will allow us to gradually build up the volume of ridings and voters to make sure the system can handle it. We’ll know better after we complete our analysis of how the system worked in Calgary-Lougheed.”
LISTEN: Pamela Renwick of Elections Alberta speaks about the use of new technology during Thursday’s byelection in Calgary-Lougheed
I think we’d all applaud any technology that allows us to move through the voting process without having to stand in line waiting for the chance to vote. But because it is new technology, it is not realistic to think that it is going to be perfect on the first try.
Ask anyone working for the federal government and being paid through the Phoenix system. That’s the best current example of what can happen when hundreds of thousands of people depend upon technology to deliver their pay and keep track of their taxes, only to find out the hard way that sometimes, technology isn’t everything it needs to be.
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