Elections Manitoba boss defends agency’s performance despite issues with new technology, human errors By: Chris Kitching Posted: 7:14 PM CDT Friday, Oct. 13, 2023

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The head of Elections Manitoba defended the independent agency Friday after the Oct. 3 provincial election suffered technical problems and human errors that led to wide discrepancies between some unofficial and official results.

Chief electoral officer Shipra Verma ended her silence as official results were released 10 days after Manitobans elected a majority NDP government.

“I can confidently say the election results are complete and accurate,” she told the Free Press. “The election was conducted in a free and fair manner.”

Verma acknowledged there is room for improvement, after Manitoba’s first general election with electronic vote-counting machines, or tabulators, didn’t go as smoothly as hoped.

The machines are intended to bring faster and more reliable results. A learning curve with new technology and processes presented issues for staff during advance voting and on election day.

Elections Manitoba is carrying out a review to ensure issues are not repeated. The tabulators were not connected to the internet, so results were not compromised, Verma said.

Dawson Trail, won by Progressive Conservative incumbent Bob Lagassé, had one of the biggest discrepancies when official results were published.

The unofficial vote total was 10,508. The official count had almost 1,400 fewer votes, at 9,126. The final tally revealed two sets of polls were double reported, which inflated the unofficial totals.

“I can confidently say the election results are complete and accurate … The election was conducted in a free and fair manner.”–Chief electoral officer Shipra Verma

Verma said the double-reporting was the result of human error when results from tabulators were submitted, and the mistake was corrected in the official count.

In all, six or seven manual errors occurred, she said. The agency had 900-plus polling stations and used 650 tabulators across the province as part of an ambitious plan to modernize the process.

In some constituencies, staff failed to count some ballots before submitting unofficial results. Those ballots were included in the official results.

In Lac du Bonnet, for example, an unofficial total of 9,067 votes increased to 9,775 in the official count. Regardless, PC incumbent Wayne Ewasko was victorious.

Despite the issues, Verma is confident and satisfied with the performance of the machines and staff. The public should be, too, she said.

Approximately 7,000 employees were given sufficient training, she said, disputing claims to the contrary.

Verma said voting was not interrupted despite issues with new technology, including laptop computers and ballot printers, and storm-related power outages on election day.

Polling stations that lost power reverted to manual voting until electricity was restored.

Elections Manitoba said manual ballots were used far more than anticipated due to machines being inoperable or experiencing problems during advance and election-day voting.

That meant staff had to do more time-consuming hand counts than expected.

Verma cited record advance-voting turnout as one of the election’s successes. A total of 200,790 Manitobans — or almost one-quarter of eligible voters — cast ballots early, an increase of 80 per cent compared with 2019.

Had all advance ballots been counted by hand, results would not have been reported until about 3 a.m., Elections Manitoba.

Access to the agency’s live results web page was temporarily interrupted due to the failure of a firewall, which is meant to prevent unauthorized network access.

“We are extremely disappointed by that,” said Verma.

External experts are investigating the cause.

There was a 30-minute gap when results were not updated. In hindsight, Elections Manitoba could have used social media to acknowledge the issue and tell the public it was working on a fix, but the focus at that time was solving the problem, she said.

“We were all hands on deck at that point,” she said.

Elections Manitoba said the disruption did not affect the integrity of the election. It said 97 per cent of results were reported on election night.

Polling stations used one of three voting methods: a computer system and vote-counting machine; a computer system with manual counting; or, in smaller locations, traditional manual polls.

Manitobans again had the option of casting votes at any advance poll in the province, this time mostly using machines rather than write-in ballots. A change in how those votes are counted and reported led to a procedural error and delay in some polling stations showing results.

In some cases, where zeroes should have been entered by staff, fields were left blank. It meant the system appeared to show some non-resident votes had not yet been counted when there were none to count.

Elections Manitoba said it allocated 10 days to tally final results instead of the usual seven due to the Thanksgiving weekend and a change in how the permanent voters list is updated during the process.

Verma said she waited to comment because it wouldn’t have been responsible to tell the public she did not yet have answers within a few days of the election.

“As an organization, we wanted to know what was wrong before making any public statements,” she said.

Christopher Adams, an adjunct professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba, and Democracy Watch co-founder Duff Conacher said the chief electoral officer should have faced the media sooner to acknowledge the issues and explain how they were being addressed.

“I do think some more transparency would have been helpful,” said Adams.

Conacher, a proponent of hand-count systems, said Manitoba’s election shows machines don’t necessarily save time.

The NDP won a majority government with 34 seats. The Tories will form the official Opposition after winning 22 constituencies. The Liberals have one seat.

Premier-designate Wab Kinew and his cabinet will be sworn in Wednesday. He will be Manitoba’s first First Nations premier.

Overall turnout was 55 per cent, which matched 2019 and was slightly lower than 2016, which had a turnout of 57 per cent. The deadline to apply for a recount is Oct. 19.

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @chriskitching