I was no end impressed that Canada could count 13,000,000 paper ballots, by hand, in about 4 hours.

Would you please describe the ballot to me and what kind of marks are used to indicate one's choices? Oh, and what implements are used to mark the paper.

Thank you.

-- Pam (Pam@j.o.e), December 10, 2000

Answers

Ah, but would they get the same results the *second* time they counted them?

-- gene (ekbaker@essex1.com), December 10, 2000.

I don't know, Gene.

However, I have talked to my board and we stand ready to do our part should the need arise to recount all of Pennsylvania. [g]

-- Pam (Pam@j.o.e), December 10, 2000.

Our ballots were hand-counted? I didn't know that!

However, 13,000,000 is only about a tenth what y'all would need to count, isn't it? And we have centrally run elections... every province does *not* get to decide how to run the federal election, the federal gov't decides that.. and when it will be, up to 5 years after the last election. If the gov't doesn't call one before that, I guess the Queen's representative would dissolve parliament and call one for them, but it's never come to that (that I know of!)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 13, 2000.

Canada has a Queen???

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), December 13, 2000.

Kritter, we never had a war of independence, and we're still part of the Commonwealth, so the queen of England is nominally our monarch. Our government is very differently run than yours, and although the monarch (through her representatives, the lieutenant-governers and the governer general) has to sign new laws to make them legal, I can't imagine them ever refusing to sign any properly read bill.

And I'm not even sure that she still has to sign (or her rep), since we got our very own constitution back in the early 1980's, curtesy of Pierre Trudeau.

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 13, 2000.

Hello Tricia--

I read that in the Washington Post and I bookmarked it but now the bookmark leads nowhere.

My precinct votes with pen or pencil on paper ballots. I have been looking at the error rates on mechanical voting machines and the possible fraud involved. Paper and pen seems like a pretty good system.

I'll see if I can find the story somewhere else.

-- Pam (Pam@j.o.e), December 14, 2000.

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Click Here! Related Quotes ^DJI ^IXIC ^SPC ^IIX ^PSE 10794.44 2822.77 1359.99 357.73 879.88 +0.00 +0.00 +0.00 +0.00 +0.00 delayed 20 mins - disclaimer Tuesday November 28, 4:29 pm Eastern Time "No-tech" Canadian election delivers speedy vote count (UPDATE: Recasts in first three paras)

By Janet Guttsman

TORONTO, Nov 28 (Reuters) - As lawyers in Florida bickered over the presidential election, Canadians voted with pencil and paper on Monday, marking an ``X'' against the name of a candidate, with their printed ballots then counted by hand.

And, as many smug-looking Canadians were quick to point out, the results of Canada's ``no-tech'' federal election came in quickly and accurately even as the seemingly never-ending electoral story south of the border dragged on.

By Tuesday morning, Canadians already knew everything they needed to about the next government, the next prime minister and the composition of the next Parliament.

That's a contrast to the situation in the United States, where lawyers are still wrangling about the outcome of the Nov. 7 presidential poll with a few hundred votes separating the two contenders in the crucial state of Florida.

Lawyers are having a field day challenging the way votes are counted, the ballot paper in a key Florida county, and what to do about dimpled or pregnant chads -- pieces of paper that did not completely separate from the punch-card ballot forms, distorting the results from counting machines.

``There were minor glitches in terms of the electronic voter lists, but we like to claim that Canada has a superior system,'' said Paul Thomas, a political scientist at the University of Manitoba.

``We count the votes on the basis of 301 constituencies, so it becomes easier to break the task down into small, manageable pieces, and it seems to be a more efficient way to do it.''

The results, announced just hours after the last polling station closed, handed a hefty victory to veteran Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who called the election ahead of time to capitalize on a strong showing in opinion polls.

Chretien's Liberal Party boosted the number of seats it holds in Parliament after a divisive, back-biting campaign and won another five years in power.

LET'S KEEP IT SIMPLE

Thomas noted that Canada, which inherited its constituency-based, first-past-the-post voting system from Britain, had not followed the United States in using machines to count votes, or even to vote in Parliament.

``Our system has some advantages,'' he said. ``If there are errors they tend to be modest in scale.''

But in some ways the system was also less fair, allowing candidates to win even if they do not receive an overall majority of votes and weighting constituencies to give small, lightly populated regions a bigger share of seats.

David Rudd, director of the Canadian Institute for Strategic Studies, agreed the Canadian system worked well as far as the count was concerned.

But he said one could not condemn the U.S. electoral system on the basis of the unprecedented events in Florida, where Texas governor George W. Bush appears to have won a few hundred more votes that Vice President Al Gore.

``They took pieces of paper and then counted them, they did not punch out chads,'' Rudd said. ``But I do not think there is any inherent superiority in our system. The U.S. system usually seems to work just fine, this time it's just a bit bizarre.''

Noting that the wrangling in the United States had depressed already- low interest in Canada's vote, he added glumly: ``Even Mexico is more exciting than we are. I suppose that is what you get when you are a country that is at peace with itself and with its neighbors.''

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-- Pam (Pam@j.o.e), December 14, 2000.

Tricia--

This is the little story I first read on kilpsan.com. I thought/think it is a pretty neat system.

Associated Press on November 28 reported that 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.

-- Pam (Pam@j.o.e), December 14, 2000.

Tricia, I had NO idea Canada was part of the commenwealth, Queen and all. Sorry, feeling like a very dumb American right now. I'm suprised Canadians haven't sent the Queen packing...or is it beneficial to you somehow?

What else don't I know about Canada, eh?

-- kritter (kritter@adelphia.net), December 14, 2000.

Now there's a question... is having a queen beneficial somehow? I dunno, Kritter, is having a president beneficial somehow? Or a prime minister? Personnally, I think the world might be a better place if politics were outlawed ;-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 15, 2000.

canadians contributed to the election process in florida by registering to vote as citizens so they could claim homestead exemption and pay less property taxes, florida loves visitors but canadians who come here and live illegally GO HOME.

-- glen c banks (glnban@aol.com), October 03, 2002.

They sure counted that numbers of paper But They might have hired about 30,000 peoples to count for them =)

-- sunny oh (ravernz_001@hotmail.com), December 17, 2002.

Actually, most of the work is done by volunteers. All political parties are permitted to have representatives on hand to oversee the count of the ballots. The one time I was involved was during a provincial election, but I believe the federal system uses much the same methods. The volunteer representatives from the two main political parties counted the ballots and the count was confirmed by the paid non-partisan official. If there were disagreements in the count, an official recount can be done if requested within 24 hours. During one provincial election, our voting district elected a member of legislature by 11 votes. The official recount kept the election in her favour, but by 14 votes. So the count was out by less than one tenth of one percent. Unfortunately for me, I voted for the underdog. I empathize with all those democrats in Florida :-)

-- Tricia the Canuck (jayles@telusplanet.net), December 17, 2002.