There’s no doubt the 2018 municipal election ran into problems. The most obvious issue, of course, is the breakdown of the electronic voting, which saw 51 municipalities impacted by a sudden failed on Election Day.
We know a switch was flipped that shouldn’t have been and the information pipeline was choked off. That situation can be avoided in the future. Electronic voting isn’t going away, so we’re going to have to get it right. I’m not concerned that we won’t.
But Greater Sudbury had its own municipal election problems. Or maybe it didn’t. Therein lies the rub.
We don’t know. People received incorrect voter information cards. People didn’t receive cards at all. People received duplicates. People received cards for dead people. People received cards with errors on them (like incorrect birth dates) that created problems when they tried to cast a ballot.
We know these things happened. We know, because they happen to some degree in every election. No system is perfect and when you’re dealing with information on tens of thousands of people, mistakes are going to happen. It’s inevitable.
What we don’t know is how widespread the issue might have been this election. We don’t know if there were an unusual number of errors, by that I mean a higher rate of mistakes than what we would normally expect to see.
Then there is the Facebook effect. On social media, a problem can appear to be bigger than it actually is. Posts (whether based in reality or not) can go viral, gathering views and shares and reactions, echoing across online communities until something minor or isolated appears major and widespread.
All we have at the moment are anecdotes, stories people are sharing or have shared with media outlets, on social media and with city councillors. Ward 2 Coun. Michael Vagnini used these anecdotes when he wrote to Elections Ontario about with his concerns.
For the record, I agree with both Vagnini and with Ward 5 Coun. Bob Kirwan, both of whom voted against having a fully electronic vote in the municipal election. Yes, the world is moving in that direction, but not all of us are comfortable yet with online voting, or with going online at all.
And people have to feel comfortable voting, they have to trust in the franchise, in the right to a confidential vote in a political election. The fact is, many people, mostly older voters but not exclusively that demographic, don’t fully trust the online system and would have preferred to cast a paper ballot.
They should have had that option. There is no good reason why voters couldn't have been given a choice between a paper or a digital ballot. Would that have added seven figures to the cost of the election? Maybe. To that I say: Fine. It’s our money anyway and shouldn’t we be spending our money in such a way that everyone feels comfortable casting a ballot?
E-voting may be the way of the future, but there’s no reason we can’t ease into it like a hot bath, rather than jumping in head first hoping not to get burned. Like I said, I agree with both councillors on that front.
Now, after the e-voting system failed on Oct. 22, I asked CAO Ed Archer about voter information problems. I wanted to know if the city would be doing a post-election report that explored whether voter information issues were within the normal range or were anomalous. He told me in October that, yes, the city would be compiling an election post-mortem report.
Since this is our first online-only vote, on that basis alone we should take a long, hard look at the vote and the complaints. We need to know how many mistakes with the list were made, how that compares to past elections, and whether the system was able to detect any fraudulent activity.
I anxiously await the results of that report. We don't need anecdotes; we need facts. We need that report. We need to know how widespread voting problems were. This isn’t a minor thing.
Democracy, as a political system, is built on trust (and legislation that punishes untrustworthiness). Trust in government; trust in politicians; trust, above all, in the voting system itself, which is the very core of democracy.
All trust in the system flows from the integrity of the vote. If the populace cannot trust the voting system, the public cannot trust the results of an election, and if we can’t trust the results of an election, how are we to trust the government that’s elected.
See where I’m going with this?
That report needs to be done and it needs to be thorough, and if it finds widespread problems with voter information leading to widespread disenfranchisement (though given the voter turnout percentage, this seems unlikely), we need to act decisively to ensure there’s confidence in the system and in those people we’ve elected to oversee that system.
But we need good information first. Anecdotes are helpful, they can be instructive, but they aren’t concrete evidence. We need that report.
Mark Gentili is the editor of Sudbury.com and Northern Life.
