Elections Manitoba works to verify 20 advance votes cast

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/04/2016 (3488 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Javier Schwersensky was surprised to hear from Elections Manitoba this week, telling him there was a problem with the advance vote for the provincial election he’d cast at Grant Park shopping centre.

He’s not alone. Schwersensky is among 20 people so far in the same boat.

“She assured me the secrecy was not compromised but she needed to talk to me,” Schwersensky told the Free Press.

“What happened is that your ballot (in which you write the name of the candidate) goes into an envelope that then goes into a bigger envelope with the riding information. And the voter has to sign it. Apparently, from what I was told, the people manning my polling desk forgot to get that signature,” he said.

“So now Elections Manitoba is chasing down the people, and they even come to your workplace with your ballot, look at your ID again and then get you to sign it,” said Schwersensky.

It’s rare, but it happens. And it gets rectified quickly, said Alison Mitchell, communications and public information manager for Elections Manitoba.

“It has happened in 20 cases out of approximately 18,389 advance non-resident votes cast so far,” Mitchell said. “The lack of signatures has not delayed the counting of advance ballots. All advance ballots are counted on election night.

“When a voter votes at a location outside of his electoral division, he is required to complete a certificate envelope, with his name, address and home electoral division. The ballot itself goes in an unmarked envelope which, once completed, goes into the certificate envelope, which allows the ballot to be returned to the correct electoral division,” she explained.

“Once the certificate envelope arrives back at the voter’s home electoral division, the unmarked envelope containing the ballot is taken out of the certificate envelope. The certificate envelope is then put aside, and the unmarked envelope goes into the ballot box. When the ballots are counted, they cannot be identified, i.e. associated with the voter,” Mitchell said.

“In order to ensure the vote is valid and to maintain the integrity of the vote, the certificate envelope must be signed by both the voter and the voting officer. In these 20 or so cases, the voting officer had not asked the voter to sign the envelope, so we have been contacting all of them to get their signatures.

“We are trying to make this as convenient as possible for the voter by going to their home or office, or they also have the option of coming to our office,” Mitchell said. “In the case of non-resident voters, the signature affirms that they are eligible voters and that they have not already voted. Without this signature, the vote is not valid and would not count.”

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Nick Martin

Former Free Press reporter Nick Martin, who wrote the monthly suspense column in the books section and was prolific in his standalone reviews of mystery/thriller novels, died Oct. 15 at age 77 while on holiday in Edinburgh, Scotland.