The city of Burnaby is making some changes to the city’s election bylaws ahead of the municipal election on October 20.
Councillors voted to lease new automated vote counting machines from Dominion Voting at a recent council meeting. Ballots will be updated to indicate the candidate’s party affiliations, and voters will fill in an oval or draw an “X” instead of a line. The bylaws outlining these changes passed first, second and third reading, and will be finalized at a later meeting.
Burnaby has been using 42 automated vote counting machines since 1994, and staff say the more than two-decade-old machines need to be replaced for maintenance, technical support, and security reasons.
Instead of showing every voter how to make a proper mark on the ballot, election officials will now only be required to demonstrate how to vote correctly by request.
Coun. Colleen Jordan told the NOW the old voting machines needed to be replaced because the software is outdated.
“The old ones are really, really old,” she said, laughing. “I don’t think we could have gotten away with using the old ones again.
“We have to put on an election, and we needed to update our technology.”
The Elections Office will test the new machines, she said, to make sure they’re working properly.
Coun. Pietro Calendino said at a council meeting at the end of June, that he and Coun. Sav Dhaliwal reviewed the proposal for the new machines with staff, and they were both satisfied that the chances for a counting error were small, a “one-in-10-million chance.”
“The machines will be quite accurate in their counts. Even if it's three or four, five, the difference between the last elected and the next one, it’s probably quite correct,” he said.
Other changes would allow ties to be resolved by lot following a judicial recount. Council also approved advanced voting days on October 6, 10 and 13 from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m.
The Shadbolt Centre for the Arts will not be used as a voting location this year. Instead, voters will head to the Bill Copeland Sports Centre for advanced voting and general election days.
Voting at the Brentwood and Lougheed Town Centres will be located to the Cameron Recreation Complex and Willingdon Community Centre this year due to ongoing construction.
A list of final voting locations will come to council for approval at a future meeting.
