Residents of Rocky View County (RVC) have raised concerns with the County’s current election process, resulting in a Notice of Motion brought forward by Councillor Jerry Arshinoff at a meeting on Jan. 12. The motion proposed the implementation of a voters’ list as a means of tracking votes and ensuring the “integrity” of the process, Arshinoff said.
“The current process is really just the honor system, and there is something to be said for that,” he added.
According to Arshinoff, if a voter lacks valid identification, they are required to complete a form to verify their eligibility. There are “severe penalties” if a resident is caught lying on the form, but he said once the forms are submitted, they aren’t checked – just collected in a “locked box.”
“The likelihood of ever getting caught for having lied on this form is infinitely close to zero,” Arshinoff said. “The losing candidate could conceivably go to court and ask that they be checked, but still the chances of winning are miniscule. And even if you did go to court and found out someone had lied, would that change the election result? Because it still doesn’t prove who he actually voted for.”
In addition, he said, taking the issue to court would be “extraordinarily expensive.”
RVC resident John McMurray said he could recall one instance in a previous election where a candidate paid thousands of dollars for a judicial review.
“It shouldn’t be that complicated to verify the election results,” McMurray said. “It’s not secure, and I think a voters’ list would go a long way. That way, even if there are questions after the fact, it’s easy to go back through the list and make sure no one has voted twice or anything.”
Although there are other county residents who share McMurray’s opinion, Arshinoff said most are likely unaware of the current election process. His motion was brought forward primarily from his own belief that the system should be more secure, he added.
“I’m not saying anyone cheated – there would be no way for me to know that – but you only need a few people to lie about where they live, or vote at advance polls as well as on regular election day, to make a huge difference on the results,” he said. “The vast majority of people are very honest, but in a small division with small turnouts where the winner is determined by a dozen votes, you need very few people.”
At the very least, Arshinoff added, he’d like to see some way to verify residents who vote during advance polls are unable to vote again.
While he admitted there would be a cost to implement any changes to the system, Arshinoff said he brought the motion forward this year because RVC is due for a census – and, according to Arshinoff, if RVC implements a voters’ list while doing the census, the additional cost would be “miniscule.”
“However, census or no census – democracy costs money, and it is well worth investing to ensure the process has as much integrity as possible,” he said. “That’s why the rest of the civilized world has a voters’ list. There’s no harm in doing it, and we really should have had it done long ago.”
RVC administration requested a time extension to research best practices and related costs to conducting an enumeration in order to implement a voters’ list for the next municipal election, scheduled for October 2017. The request was approved unanimously, and the report will be presented to council Feb. 23.
“It’s come up before, and it seems like it’s not an unreasonable thing to do,” McMurray said.
“None of this is new, ground-breaking technology – other jurisdictions do things similar to this. It’s not rocket science.”
