vision2020
O Canada
Canada Hand-Counts Votes in 4 Hours Tue Nov 28 18:36:00 2000 GMT OTTAWA (AP)
- Florida vote canvassers, take note. Within four hours after the last polls
closed in Canada's parliamentary election, officials at 50,000 polling
stations had hand-counted virtually every one of nearly 13 million paper
ballots.
There were glitches, to be sure - an angry voter seized a ballot box in Nova
Scotia and threw it into a polluted lagoon. But overall, Canada's federal
elections system, which uses no counting machines, had a smooth Election
Night.
From Newfoundland to Yukon, across the world's second-largest country,
roughly 150,000 election workers fanned out Monday to a far-flung network of
polling stations. Even in the biggest cities, no one station serves more
than 500 registered voters - most of the officers entrusted with the
hand-counting had to handle no more than 300 or 400 ballots.
Pierre Blain, a spokesman for Elections Canada, said the system stresses
transparency, with each party entitled to deploy a representative to watch
the polling station chief count the ballots.
Any complaints can be registered with national elections officials; recounts
are conducted automatically in cases of extremely narrow victory margins.
Though some of Monday's 301 parliamentary races were close, the overall
result was clear-cut: Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Liberal Party won its
third straight majority government while increasing its seats in the House
of Commons from 161 to 173.
Blain, in a telephone interview Tuesday, politely declined to pass judgment
on the electoral chaos in Florida, which was compounded by the use of
different voting systems in various counties.
``All the democracies must look at their systems themselves,'' Blain said.
``It's not for somebody from another country to look at them.''
``The most important thing is that people must vote,'' he said. ``I'm sure
the workers in Florida did their best.'' The Canadian system, in place for a
century, uses traditional paper ballots, to be marked with an ``X'' beside
the name of the preferred parliamentary candidate. There are no hanging
chads, no questions about mechanical snafus.
In Nova Scotia, though, there was little that election officials could do
when a man ran off with a ballot box and threw it into a waste-treatment
lagoon.
Alexander MacKenzie, who had sought compensation for living near the
polluted water, was arrested for the theft, spent Monday night in jail, then
was released pending a Dec. 18 court appearance.
The box was recovered with the ballots still legible, but under Canadian law
they were discarded because they had been removed from official supervision.
The polling station contacted the 125 people who had cast ballots; about 70
returned to vote again.
There were some systematic glitches, as well. At some polling stations,
people arrived to find they were not on the list of eligible voters; many
were confused even though most were permitted to vote if they had valid
identification and spare time to register on the spot.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment for Elections Canada was the meager voter
turnout of 63 percent - the lowest in more than 75 years.
``Everywhere in the world, there seems to be a trend of turnout going
down,'' Blain said. ``Our task is simply to make sure there are no
impediments for those who want to vote.''
Copyright © 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. Republication or
redistribution of Associated Press content is expressly prohibited without
the prior written consent of Associated Press. Associated Press shall not be
liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in
reliance thereon.
Stephen Cooke
winmail.dat
Back to TOC