Washblog

Calgary has no need to look at electronic voting machines despite hand-counting from the civic election going into the early morning hours yesterday, the city's chief returning officer said.

Barb Clifford said an unexpectedly large turnout of voters had election workers busily sorting through ballots hours after the polls closed Monday, leaving some candidates staying up late to find out whether they had won.

And while Edmonton managed to have all but one of its polls counted by 9:30 p.m. thanks to optical scanning voting machines, Clifford said Calgary will likely continue to do things the old-fashioned way.

"Our results are out in four hours -- with a machine that only speeds up by two," she said after a late night in the election office.

"Why spend millions on something we would only use every three years?"

Clifford said Edmonton pays about $7 per voter to hold its elections while Calgary only shells out around $2 because it doesn't have to worry about purchasing and maintaining machines.

And she added there were few complaints with the vast majority coming from media.  [ Hee!]

Cochrane and Airdrie also employ vote-counting machines, but Clifford said the price tag to bring the entire system into a city of more than one-million people [Calgary] makes it cost-prohibitive.

"When you're dealing with a big city, you're dealing with big bucks to get those machines," she said, adding prior to the last two elections, Calgary's numbers were coming in ahead of Edmonton's electronically aided results

End clips

Source
"Automated vote count 'too costly'"
Sun [Calgary]  2007-10-17 03:03:05 MST
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/Alberta/2007/10/17/4582641-sun.html