Election ‘free and fair’ despite delayed results, independent agency says

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This article was published 04/10/2023 (735 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Elections Manitoba expected quicker results after the polls closed in Tuesday’s provincial election — thanks to new electronic voting machines — but things didn’t go quite according to plan.

New procedures, combined with power outages caused by thunderstorms early in the day, contributed to a delay in results being reported to the public, the independent agency said Wednesday.

“While we didn’t deliver the results quite as quickly as we would have liked, Manitobans can be assured that this was a free and fair election,” spokesman Mike Ambrose wrote in an email.

Visitors were temporarily unable to view live results on Elections Manitoba’s website after polls closed at 8 p.m. Ambrose said firewall problems, which are being investigated, interrupted website access.

Manitoba used electronic voting machines — or tabulators — for the first time in a provincial election, with the aim of making it faster and more convenient to cast a ballot.

Paper ballots were still used. Thousands were counted by hand in places where it was not feasible to use e-machines.

Some races were still too close to call Wednesday. Constituencies were awaiting a handful of counts for advance ballots that were cast in other electoral districts.

Manitobans had the option of casting a ballot at any advance poll in the province. A record 200,790 people, or almost one-quarter of eligible voters, did so Sept. 23-30.

A winner had not been declared in Brandon West as of Wednesday afternoon. Separated by less than 100 votes, Progressive Conservative candidate Wayne Balcaen and NDP candidate Quentin Robinson were waiting for five outside electoral districts to report advance-voting data for the constituency.

“They’ll have to pay for my blood-pressure pills,” Balcaen said jokingly of Elections Manitoba for the delay.

“It’s a little bit of a waiting game at this point,” said Robinson.

Storms knocked out power at polling stations in many areas of southern Manitoba Tuesday morning. In those situations, manual ballots were used until electricity was restored.

“At the close of polls, ballots cast manually and by vote counting machine had to be combined,” Ambrose wrote. “New reporting and reconciliation procedures also extended the count time.”

There were reports of technical issues with some machines. On Tuesday night, Ambrose said most issues with machines were addressed quickly.

More than 900 polling places were equipped with new technology and contingency plans, providing better service and more opportunities to vote, he said.

“A lot went well with the delivery of this election,” he wrote.

Another change this year allowed Manitobans to cast a ballot at any polling place in their electoral district on voting day.

Premier-designate Wab Kinew said he did not have details about any voting-day issues. The Progressive Conservatives and Liberals did not respond to requests for comment.

Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, said a lot of results rolled in after 8 p.m., but then “they all stalled.”

“There were periods when we went quite a while without a single result,” he said.

Journalists and social media users noted a gap of about 30 minutes where new results were not posted. No explanation was provided.

Once more results were published, television networks began projecting a majority NDP government, starting from about 10:20 p.m. onwards.

“They’ll have to pay for my blood-pressure pills.” –Progressive Conservative candidate Wayne Balcaen

Prior to the campaign, Elections Manitoba cited a goal of releasing most results within 60-90 minutes of 8 p.m. Tabulators were expected to count the bulk of the advance votes and polling-day ballots.

The devices are not connected to the internet. Advance votes are counted in local election offices after polls close. For election-day polls, vote-counting machines create summary results, which are verified by staff and submitted.

Adams and Malcolm Bird, an associate professor of political science at the University of Winnipeg, offered praise for Elections Manitoba despite the hiccups. They suggested the agency’s work — and same-night results — are taken for granted by some.

“We’ve become spoiled because our elections are held so well,” said Bird. “Within two hours (of polls closing), we knew the results. That’s amazing.”

Adams said the organization works hard to ensure its reputation is “exceedingly high” and to maintain public confidence in the system.

When Albertans voted in a provincial election in May, using tabulators for the first time, the wait for results dragged on.

An Elections Alberta official later told the Canadian Press a change in how advance “vote anywhere” ballots were counted contributed to the delay.

Calgary-based political strategist Stephen Carter said efforts to make it easier to vote in advance have created another level of “bureaucratic problems.”

“Each step through making it (wide) open makes it more challenging to count votes,” the president of Decide Campaigns told the Free Press. “The votes become held up in those counting systems. We still do it kind of with a mix of manual coupled with automatic. You get results quickly and another set slowly.”

Using just one vote-counting method — by machine or by hand — is a potential solution, he suggested.

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Machines would require an internet connection to automatically send results to an elections agency, but that would increase the risk of hacking, said Carter.

Consolidating advance polling stations would eliminate some counts, but also take away some of the convenience, he added.

— with files from Danielle Da Silva, Kevin Rollason and the Brandon Sun

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.