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Election Tech: In Canada, They Actually Count the Votes
Presto Vivace writes with this outline of what voting can look like while remaining countable and anonymous — and how it does look north of the U.S. border. "In Canada, they use hand-marked paper ballots, hand counted in public. Among other things, that process means that we can actually be sure who won. And if the elections of 2000 and 2008 are any guide, and the race stays as close as the pollsters sat it is, we might, on Wednesday, November 7, not be sure who won."
Any Canadians among our readers who want to comment on this?"
There's also 10x the number of counters
I'm in Montreal and I've served as a scrutineer. The system works pretty much as described in the article, but I can add a few details.
The voting section of the ballot is done with blank/white circles on a black background. This way, there is no confusion about making marks outside the lines. One circle and one circle only must have a mark for it to be a valid vote. The ballot is fairly large, maybe four by five inches or so, and that allows plenty of space between circles.
The counterfoils are strips that are torn off the ballot with the help of perforations in the paper. The counterfoils are saved in a plastic bag and the number of counterfoils is compared to the number of cast ballots as part of the process of counting votes. It's a simple process, but there is some human error. When I did it, the two numbers didn't match up. We were off by one or two, as I recall.
The biggest problem we had, and a potential source of fraud the scrutineers can do nothing about, is the list of registered voters. We get a stack of papers stapled together that contain the names and addresses of all voters eligible to vote at our poll (there are several polls at each voting location). This list tells us who has already voted in advance polls. Either some of these are in error or some voters don't remember going to the advance polls, but we had a few cases in which we had to refuse voters because they were marked as having already voted. Some of them got really angry, but there is nothing we at the polls can do about that.
The voting and counting are open to the public and to party witnesses. Anybody can watch the process take place, but it is absolutely hands off for them.
The hand-counting doesn't take very long. Each polling station (ballot box) only has to count a few hundred votes, which is then reported to the officer in charge of the voting location, and so on up the chain. The entire station - ballots, papers, counterfoils, etc. - are sealed in the box with special tape and returned, so that any recounts would be easy to accomplish.
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It's important to mention that the ballots were redesigned after the 1995 referendum so that the voter's choice is clear and unambiguous. See here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/2011_ballot.jpg/800px-2011_ballot.jpg Mark one of the circles only (an X, fill the circle in, whatever), and it's OK. Mark more than one, the ballot is spoiled. In addition, by law, each citizen gets four continuous hours to vote. That is, somewhere in the twelve hours that the polls are open, your employer has to schedule you so that you can get four uninterrupted hours to vote. So if you local poll open times are 8:30 am - 8:30 pm, and your work schedule is 9:00 am to 6:00 PM, your employer MUST either start your day at 12:30 PM, or end it at 4:30 PM. In all the voting I've done in Canada, the whole process, from the time I've walked into a polling station to the time I've walked out, has seldom been longer than half and hour and never longer than an hour. No, I've never had to queue outside.