Troubles with voting machines during the 2011 civic election revealed through a Freedom of Information request are another reason to reform civic elections, says an unsuccessful mayoral candidate.
Randy Helten of Neighbourhoods for a Sustainable Vancouver received 226 pages about preventive maintenance and repairs of the City of Vancouvers 160 AccuVote-OS machines. Records show the units were tested in late February and early March 2011, but a document titled AccuVote Call Sheet lists 37 malfunction incidents between Nov. 9 and 19.
The [Nov. 23] staff report from the chief election officer made absolutely no mention of any problem at all, Helten said. This is worthy of further discussion. This leads to the need for discussion about is it appropriate for employees of the city to be chief election officer?
Helten said civic elections should be administered by an independent provincial body instead of the city clerks office. City council recommended in March 2010 that the provinces chief electoral officer be appointed to oversee civic elections.
Thirty-four of the issues happened on the Nov. 19 election day. Of those, 23 were during the 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. voting hours. Four voting day problems were reported by polling station 6 in the West End. Memory card not in election mode was the days first problem at 7:29 a.m. There was a call for service at 5:29 p.m., ballot not read please reinsert at 6:40 p.m. and report failure could not print results at 8:15 p.m. Turning the machines off and on resolved two of the problems, but not the final one which required the hand delivery of the memory card to city hall.
An AccuVote machine at polling station 72 had a whirling sound which resolved itself at 9:43 a.m. At 6:12 p.m., the presiding election official documented a case of broke seal by accident.
There were single reports at 28 other polling stations on election day. Seven involved reader motor would not start or ballot reader motor stopped complaints. At 1:15 p.m. in station 85 in Southeast Vancouver, "Ballot Box Attendant sure that ballot count did not increment." The solution? "Sent new AccuVote and ballot box."
The 2011 election was the sixth in which city hall used AccuVote, which was developed by Global Election Systems of Vancouver as a portable ballot scan vote tabulator. Machines read the deposited ballots, store the information and print cumulative totals.
GES was bought by Ohio-based Diebold in 2001 which sold it to Election Systems and Software in 2009. Voting machine security has been frequently disputed. Diebold CEO Walden ODell admitted in 2003 he was a bagman for former U.S. president George W. Bush, which concerned Democrat voters worried about a repeat of the contested 2000 election.
Invoices show the city paid ES&S division Premier Election Solutions of Chicago $69,298.28 for maintenance and repairs, including battery, clock chip, printer ribbon and Yes/No button replacement on 160 units plus $19,703.88 to GH Enterprises of Vancouver for testing and technical support.
Gregor Robertson led Vision Vancouver to re-election, winning 77,005 of 144,823 votes in the mayoralty race, almost 20,000 more than NPA challenger Suzanne Anton. Helten was third with 4,007 votes. Only 35 percent of the citys 418,878 registered voters cast ballots.
City chief electoral officer Janice MacKenzie was not available for comment.
