With less than 100 days until the general municipal election, city officials are working to make sure their processes align with changes made at the provincial level to the Local Authorities Election Act.
Due to the changes made at the provincial level returning officer hired PricewaterhouseCoopers to complete an audit that includes a series of recommendations and key challenges the city could face during the upcoming election and also identify any gaps, potential risks, vulnerabilities or inefficiencies in the processes.
City Clerk and Returning Officer Bonnie Hilford says because of competing legislation says administration did not know how to proceed. Hilford adds they also had reached out to other municipalities who are facing similar problems.
“With such significant changes imposed by the Province, the objective of the audit is to ensure the integrity, transparency, efficiency, impartiality and completeness of the proposed processes,” Hilford says. “This will also help with awareness for Council, the public and candidates while strengthening trust and transparency in the new processes.”
Some of the big areas that the assessment looked at included ballot handling, ballot box operations and counting procedures. The audit also looked at the proposed plan to use City Hall as the central Counting Centre for the election and the feasibility of completing the count within legislated timelines.
“A couple of the bigger concerns was moving the ballots during the advanced vote. The legislation said for at-large election systems, which we are, that the ballots would stay at those facilities, and we were concerned that they would be locked in a closet and not secure.”
“We wanted them here at City Hall in our secure vault. So, we decided that we would move them. Another concern was counting and how long to count. Do we count all night until we’re done, many days, or do we take a break?”
Administration’s plan for counting is for 20 groups of four to count until roughly midnight on Monday, October 20th before calling it a night, the following two days the teams will work in four-hour shifts again, with the counting anticipated to be completed by Wednesday afternoon.
“We figure we have about 100,000 ballots to count, with the mayor and the councillor, the public school and the separate school. And that doesn’t include any provincial questions, which we don’t know if we’ll have or not.”
Voters are being advised that results will not be available on election night. To be able to vote, residents need to be signed up on the voter registry which they are encouraged to do ahead of time with the pre-registry cut-off being August 15th. The nomination deadline for the 2025 municipal election is September 22nd and will happen from October 8th until October 20th.
More information can be found on the city’s website.
