HANSARD
NOVA SCOTIA HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
PARTICIPATION IN THE
DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Printed and Published by Nova Scotia Hansard Reporting Services
SELECT COMMITTEE ON PARTICIPATION
IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Mr. Michel Samson (Chairman)
Hon. Mark Parent (Vice-Chairman)
Hon. Patrick Dunn
Mr. Keith Bain
Ms. Maureen MacDonald (Vice-Chairman)
Mr. Graham Steele
Mr. Charles Parker
Mr. David Wilson (Glace Bay)
Mr. Harold Theriault
[Mr. James Muir replaced Hon. Patrick Dunn]
In Attendance:
Ms. Kim Leadley
Legislative Committee Clerk
Ms. Sherri Mitchell
Legislative Committee Clerk
Ms. Paula Romanow
Research and Statistical Officer
Witness
Ms. Christine McCulloch, Chief Electoral Officer
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HALIFAX, THURSDAY, JANUARY 15, 2009
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
PARTICIPATION IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
9:00 A.M.
CHAIRMAN
Mr. Michel Samson
MR. CHAIRMAN: Good morning, committee members. It's a pleasure to welcome you on this cool morning here in Halifax. It's a pleasure for us this morning to once again have Ms. Christine McCulloch, the Chief Electoral Officer to present to us this morning. Before we get started, just for the record, I would ask members to introduce themselves.
[The committee members introduced themselves.]
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just officially, Mr. Muir, can you confirm - are you replacing Mr. Dunn now on the committee?
MR. JAMES MUIR: Mr. Chairman, I expect that I will be but our committee's list has not been officially revised yet; we're still waiting for that. So I am replacing him this morning.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, that's fine. If you can just advise us if there is a permanent change? I know Mr. Dunn did have quite a significant interest in this topic and we certainly want to have his input as we're putting together our final recommendations for the report. So if you could keep us advised of that.
Ms. McCulloch, my understanding is that you have a presentation to start this morning so by all means, I encourage you to make your presentation and I'm sure committee members will have a number of questions for you afterwards. The floor is yours.
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MS. CHRISTINE MCCULLOCH: Mr. Chairman, good morning everyone. Before I start I'd like to just introduce the new Director of Communications for Elections Nova Scotia, Tom Peck, who is a Communications Nova Scotia experienced veteran communications person. I expect that he will be of great help to my agency.
I guess I do have a presentation and you have it in hard copy and I don't have my memory stick with us, so we're going to just do this hard copy. I'm sure we can deal with that, can we?
This presentation is essentially a very quick overview, I hope, of how I see all of this - the response to the select committee's mandate and to the submissions and presentations that the committee received. My agency's role in the voting process is a piece of this, but in reading the submissions and trying to come to terms with what exactly we were looking at in the mandate of this committee, a lot of the material that was presented is not within my sphere of responsibility. It's of very great interest to me, but not directly in my sphere of responsibility. However, in this presentation what I'm going to do is give how I see this, how I see possible legislative amendments being brought forward or what their subject matter might be, touch on electronic voting and talk about some of the challenges and initiatives that are ongoing at Elections Nova Scotia.
From my reading of the submissions and the presentations, they were very interesting and very informative from a number of perspectives and they gave much food for thought to me and for my organization, quite aside from the fact that they have nothing directly to do with what we do in all cases. I would gain from this material three basic things that I take back with me to my organization.
Our world - whether it's the elections world, the political world, the social world or your community environment, or whatever it may be - has become very complex. Many demands on everyone's time, on their resources, everything - it's very complex and it's very different than it was not very long ago; that's one. The second one is that education at all age ranges on an ongoing basis is absolutely critical in this environment, in the political environment and again in the voting environment. The third one that I take from this is that respectful interaction is a defining feature of our society, it's absolutely critical to everything that we do and I take it very seriously in the voting environment because we run into a lot of issues that could be resolved or addressed if the people in the debate or the problem were respectful of each other's positions and attempted to help each other, as opposed to confront. Those three comments set the context for the comments I have following in my presentation.
The first one I want to talk about very briefly is voter turnout. I find the subject requiring some definition. We can talk about citizen engagement or we can talk about political engagement or we can talk about voter engagement. One of the comments that was made by one of the presenters early on in the book was that you can't fix this problem by simply tweaking our electoral laws. Yes, there are things that we can certainly do in the
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electoral laws but that won't solve this problem. It's far more complex than simply voting mechanics or voting process or anything like that.
Nonetheless, it's very important to me, as an election administrator, that the voting process be as good, as accessible and as simple as possible. That means that there are a number of things that can be done on the front that I am responsible for. So I see there being two broad components to addressing this low voter turnout. I don't know that it has been confirmed that it's clearly decreasing but it appears to be that way.
[9:15 a.m.]
Voter engagement, which is a much bigger mandate than mine and the voting process improvement issues, which I see as clearly within the purview of my agency. Voter engagement, as I see it, has a number of components. The political sphere - there were a number of submissions and presentations on what I consider to fall within the political sphere, how politicians and parties interrelate with the citizen.
There were a lot of comments about the public school curriculum. There appears to be a gap in education and I think it needs to be addressed on various fronts. One is potentially in the curriculum of the public schools, starting from very young ages right up through high school. I'm not going to speak directly to that because I think that's probably a matter that will be covered in another context by the committee.
The two ones that I'm particularly interested in are the Elections Nova Scotia Communications and Education Strategy, which is aimed at all ages and which, in my view, needs to be an all-the-time activity. It will gear up in advance of election time, possibly, and be very high-profile during elections and after elections as well, but it's not something that just starts when the writ is issued and stops when the election is over. It needs to be an ongoing activity. The other piece is simple, easy voting opportunities.
The only two that are in the control of my agency are the latter, the communications education in the election in the voting context and attempting to improve our voting opportunities. Voting process improvement - probably most of what I think can be done will require amendments to the Elections Act.
Four focuses. Accessibility for voters and candidates - and I say voters and candidates. I think voters, candidates and Parties because candidates and Parties as well play a very important role in the political system and in the election environment.
Simplicity - it's very clear to me, as an election administrator, that if it isn't simple for the voter, it's problematic. People decline to vote for very simple reasons. They will wait in line because they are forced to - to pay for their groceries for half an hour or an hour - but
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if there is trouble at the polls, they turn away and they simply don't come back. So simplicity and ease are absolutely critical features of this environment.
Another thing that I think goes directly to the voters' view of the integrity of the system is that the administration of elections be clearly non-partisan. There are a lot of people who still believe that any partisan component in the voting process somehow takes away from its validity.
Alternate voting methods. Clearly the future includes some form of an open mind, for one, and forms of electronic participation. The Elections Act modernization, as I see it, is a fairly big undertaking. The Elections Act is antiquated in a number of respects. It also speaks very clearly, in my view, to a paper-based, face-to-face traditional communications environment. It really doesn't contemplate the kind of issues that come forward in an electronic environment.
Another thing about the Elections Act that is interesting and deserves thought is what the process will be for pursuing amendments or overhaul. Right now, the Elections Act references the Election Commission and that commission, in its mandate, is advisory to the Chief Electoral Officer and has ongoing meetings that address whatever the agenda is determined to be. So is the Elections Act going to be amended through that process? Is it going to be a different process? Are the expectations of this committee that my office will bring forward amendments in response to recommendations? I think that needs to be considered.
Operational implementation. The elections environment is considerably more complex on an administrative level than it was even five years ago, eight years ago, 10 years ago. It is that way because a lot of things have been changed piecemeal in the legislation that mean that being up and ready to delivering an election has to be within 72 hours of the election call.
The write-in ballot was introduced a few years ago and the law requires that you be able to vote by write-in ballot within five days of the writ being issued. In years past, what was done in the first couple of weeks of an election period was to conduct enumeration, get the office organized, talk to the workers, get things going. It's far more complex now because things have to happen at earlier times in the period. It really was fairly wide-open in terms of preparation for voting when enumeration occurred because the first formal event was actually nomination, followed by a special poll, followed by an advance poll, followed by ordinary polling day.
Right now, what happens is voting occurs or can occur within a few days of the writ being issued, right up until the day before, the Saturday before election day. So the process is far more complex now.
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The result is that getting ready for an election and keeping ready for an election at all times is a different process. We have, at Elections Nova Scotia, a project underway which is a detailed election-readiness planning initiative, which ensures that, in what we appear to have frequently now, a minority government, is an election-readiness plan that allows us to deliver an election pretty much any time. While a minority is in place, the obvious times for being ready are Spring and Fall. Getting ready, staying ready and being able to continue quality control and do some kind of projects and initiatives is a challenging thing for this organization.
The other thing about implementation of change is that if you change election operations, what you do is, you have to change the product that we produce, which is the numerous manuals and handbooks and explanatory documentation, the training, the train-the-trainer process and it all has to be rolled out from head office, through the returning office, right out to the poll workers. It's a very challenging activity to undertake. So operational implementation, when you change the Elections Act, is a very serious consideration and it goes well to the timing of when changes can be delivered.
Considerations for change. Now some of these come from the materials. This isn't an all-inclusive list but some of them are from the materials in the presentations. Non-political appointment of election personnel; fixed election dates; Saturday as a polling date as opposed to a weekly Tuesday election. There are a lot of reasons why a Saturday - it's not perfect, no day is perfect but a Saturday would allow participation by youth and by working people who would work during the day during an election but aren't able to because of their work responsibilities primarily.
Use of schools as polling locations. We have a lot of difficulty with using schools as polling locations, particularly in the week because the children are at school and there are growing concerns about the safety of our children when they're at school and people are coming in and out of school. We do our best to address those, through security measures, but nonetheless many schools and many parents believe that it's an inappropriate environment for children to be exposed to.
Removing restrictions on the number of polling stations. The Elections Act is structured in such a way that you can't put polling stations wherever you choose to. There are very strict rules around where they can go. Polling divisions are approximately 450 people. You can have polling divisions that are split within your polling division, you can have polling divisions for long-term care facilities but you can't put polling stations wherever you please. So it's not a case of being able to put them wherever people are. It depends on - there are strict rules around that. I think that perhaps that should be looked at, to be able to address issues about easy accessibility.
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I, nonetheless, am strongly accepting of the need to be very careful with polling station locations because it's something that people believe could impact the kind of turnout at an election.
Special balloting - this is really an outreach service that I think is something that has to be considered seriously and that is because we're dealing with an aging population which have serious issues with accessibility and serious issues with using write-in ballots, which is really the only tool we have, if these individuals are not in a long-term care facility, for making a voting opportunity available to them.
Special balloting can take various forms but it's done federally and it was done recently in New Brunswick. Effectively the concept is that someone needing special assistance in voting can contact the returning office and people go to them. They go to them and they bring the voting environment to the individual.
Voter identification requirements - ours are not the same as they are federally. We do not have a requirement to show ID at the polls, for those even on the list of electors, but we had a lot of negative impact on our environment because of the federal identification rules. So it's quite typical for any of the negative impact - any of the problems that come out of any election to roll down to the next one, so the problems are generalized to the next voting environment but our identification rules have not changed. Perhaps they require review - perhaps we should be looking at things like vouching. Vouching was in our legislation some time ago but it was removed. It is still in the federal legislation but was very unhelpful to addressing some of the rules that were encountered in the federal election.
Fully non-partisan election administration - I have mentioned that - and just overall modernization. I don't know whether this initiative should approach full modernization of the Elections Act or whether it should go at it piecemeal but there are difficulties with continually amending a Statute because its internal coherence is challenged by continual amendment.
At Elections Nova Scotia at present, we have a number of initiatives which are ongoing which I think directly impact the concern of this committee. For example, we do have a new electronic game which we are launching early this year - it's aimed at youth ages 12 to 18. It's also a very interesting information tool for people of any age who would like to see an overview of the election process, from the voter perspective or from the candidate perspective.
We're going to be developing a program called Bring Your Kid to Vote, which is aimed at voters bringing primarily younger children into the voting environment to actually watch the role played by a parent in voting.
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We have a call centre services project underway which will produce a somewhat more robust environment for voters to use during an election, which will allow them to call in and get answers to questions on the process, as well as find out where they vote or any of the information associated with an election.
[9:30 a.m.]
Youth, as election personnel - this is a troublesome one because youth are in school during elections. But it would be very interesting to be able to come up with a program whereby children could participate as election workers during an election.
We also are working on a fairly extensive communications strategy which will address a number of different issues, in terms of providing voters with information about the voting process. What we do at Elections Nova Scotia, about how you vote, where you vote, why you vote - any kind of information that might be relevant to people.
We have a number of other initiatives. One is on-line registration which would probably address, to some extent, the issue that some have with whether they are on the list of electors and if they care to check their information, so that they do have an opportunity to do that in advance. Right now, there are no obligations on the citizen to register. That project, however, like many of the projects that we're hoping to undertake, is subject to budget approval.
In closing, I do have a few slides beyond this but one of the things that is of concern is that this is really a very complex problem and it needs to be attacked on various fronts. I think the Department of Education needs to be involved in this. Our role at Elections Nova Scotia from the communications and education perspective, I think, is relatively clear but it would help us dramatically if we had a mandate that was clear. We don't have a mandate that's clear. Under the elections legislation now, the mandate is about election administration and that's probably too restrictive to do the kinds of things that we could usefully do and that requires resources and budget as well.
Just a couple of things. The list of electors - we went to a permanent list of electors for the 2003 election and there were very serious issues associated with the use of the list at that time. Since that time, a lot of work has been done on understanding the complexity of keeping and maintaining a permanent list of electors. It's obviously an ongoing initiative and it has been turned into an ongoing initiative at Elections Nova Scotia. It's also a critical piece in traditional voting, as well as in e-voting.
The election readiness activity that I referred to is a complicating factor in how much this organization is able to do because it spends a great deal of its time being election ready and just in continual improvement initiatives. We do have limited organizational capacity
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because traditionally elections environments have been active during elections but not otherwise.
Logistics and deployment are a huge undertaking. If anyone was able to make our open house, they would have seen the kind of preparations that have to be made in order to be ready to deliver and set up offices within 72 hours of an election call. Our training component is dramatically increased from the past. We train election officials twice a year, Spring and Fall, on not only election process and theory, but also in the use of the returning officer software application that we use in the field.
Attached to this presentation are two pieces of information. One is with respect to poll workers, election workers and the costs associated with them. One of the things that was suggested in a couple of places and has been put forward on a number of occasions is the appointment of DROs and poll clerks from lists provided by the Parties. Volunteers are a huge issue in an election, getting even political volunteers continues to be a huge issue. The legislation now requires that in every electoral district, the Party who holds the seat is required to recommend a list of people for the position of DROs and the Party coming second in the previous election to provide a list of poll clerks.
Invariably, election officials do not get lists that are sufficient to address the need. We hire thousands of election workers during an election and it's difficult enough for Parties to get volunteers and to get workers to work on the political side, let alone the election side. The suggestion has been made that perhaps that should be removed so that the returning officer can go about the job of identifying workers earlier and without that input.
That attachment is in there for your information just so you can see some information on the number of poll workers and the costs associated with that. The second attachment is with respect to the list of electors. The list is challenged and criticized fairly frequently and this is a piece that explains the nature of the list and why it's so difficult or so challenging to keep that list current.
Part of the reason is that the components of the list are many and none of them are under the control of Elections Nova Scotia, so the source of our information is a number of different agencies. Challenges occur because municipalities control street names and Vital Statistics keeps death records and Elections Canada identifies people moving out of Nova Scotia to someplace else and various other factors. Canada Post changes postal codes and changes mailing addresses, and delivery seems to be difficult at the local level. It's unpredictable how things get delivered at the local Post Master or Post Mistress level - they seem to have their own way of doing things. Sometimes it's very hard to predict what those are.
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Anyway, the list is a complex thing for us to control, we do our very best and we have a very robust plan in terms of making sure that list is as good as it can be. Those are my remarks.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. McCulloch, for your presentation. I'm assuming committee members will have some questions. Mr. Steele.
MR. GRAHAM STEELE: Thank you very much for your presentation, helpful as always. I think it's very important to draw the distinction you have about the issues that have been raised with us about citizen engagement as one of the things that is going on, and then simply the mechanics of voting where people have identified various ways where it is difficult to vote if you want to. I think we've all come to learn that those are two very separate questions and you can deal with the mechanics issue - and I'm sure in our final report we will - and have virtually no impact on voter turnout because we haven't dealt with the citizen engagement issue.
The thing I want to ask you about is enumerations. Is the day of the full enumeration over?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I would say probably.
MR. STEELE: Why? Is it simply because of cost or are there other reasons?
MS. MCCULLOCH: No, if it were simply cost, I don't think that I would take the view I take. I think we did a full enumeration in 2005 in the Fall and that was to address the problems with the first try at using a permanent list. What we found was that it was a valuable initiative to the extent that it was able to identify electors, but that those enumerating and those being enumerated encountered difficulties. People being enumerated now - people don't respond particularly well to people coming to the door and asking them to confirm their personal information. People aren't home. People are not inclined to give out personal information because they don't want to be identified; they don't want to be on anyone's list anywhere. People are very transient, especially the younger portion of the population so they don't have an address at which they will be. We had enumerators who were threatened. We had a lot of people not home. We had senior citizens who were very offended by anyone coming into their building for security reasons. The overall result was that the information we got was not nearly as complete as it needs to be to compile a list.
MR. STEELE: When we started this process, I had this theory that one of the reasons why the voter turnout seemed to have been dropping was that the permanent list now is much better than it used to be and had people on it who never used to get on the voters list and that would explain why it only appeared to show a drop in voter turnout. With the help of the Legislative Library, I was able to get population data back to the 1970s and I have a graph
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I can bring in and show the committee. What I found was exactly the opposite to what I expected to find.
What I found was that in the days of the full-on enumeration, the voters list tracked pretty much exactly the population of voting age; just about exactly. It was only when we went to the permanent list that it started dropping way below the number of people in Nova Scotia who were of voting age. In fact, as you pointed out, the 2003 election is like it goes off a cliff. The number of people on the voters list was way below the number of people of voting age.
The move to the permanent list is actually worse. The permanent list is now a worse reflection of Nova Scotia's population than in the days of a full-on enumeration, which is why I was curious about whether we would ever go back to that. As you've just explained, perhaps society has changed to the point where a full enumeration just is not going to work anymore.
MS. MCCULLOCH: There were a lot of issues with enumeration in terms of just getting a list compiled; it's incomplete. There are provinces that do enumerations but typically they have a much longer time frame in which to do it. We're supposed to be able to do a province-wide enumeration inside the election period, that's what the law currently allows. Pretty much within the first week to 10 days, which I can't understand how anyone ever thought that was possible. I don't think it's doable.
MR. STEELE: The implication of the data I gathered, though, is that the drop of voter turnout is actually worse than any of us thought because the list of eligible voters does not accurately reflect the number of people of voting age. So the drop is worse than any of us thought and perhaps at a future meeting I'll bring that data in and show it to the committee so they can see graphically exactly what I mean. Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Steele. Any other questions from the committee? Mr. Parker.
MR. CHARLES PARKER: Mr. Chairman, thank you, Christine for your presentation. I just have a couple of little questions. I guess I'm just trying to figure out the process of how to get some of these things implemented. There are some really good suggestions in there. One I particularly like is some election official going to the disabled voter, going right to their home with the ballot. That worked well in the federal campaigns but it doesn't exist here in the provincial arena. So I see it as a real positive thing.
What's the process to get from here to there? Is it legislation or is it a recommendation from yourself or from this committee? Just how do we get it implemented?
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MS. MCCULLOCH: I think it starts with a recommendation from this committee. I think it's my own experience with this accessibility of the voting process to people who are shut-in or in long-term care or in hospitals is that this is one of the most difficult problems, the biggest issue right now is getting to the voter. There are various ways to this but in this context, I think probably there's a direct link between voter turnout and not being able to access, give accessible voting opportunities to this group of people in a population. I think that's probably in the last election, one of the biggest sources of criticism.
[9:45 a.m.]
So it's logical, it seems to me, that this committee would make a recommendation with respect to investigation of a special balloting enabling legislation. We would have done this now, if we had the authority because I think this is a serious enough issue. So a recommendation that it be investigated and legislation be drafted addressing this. There are various methods that you could go about following but the real point is there needs to be some kind of outreach to this sector of the population.
MR. PARKER: Now I see it as a way to get more people engaged, get more people voting. So it has to be legislation in order for it to happen? New Brunswick, then, you had mentioned is doing that now so I assume they went through legislation to make it happen there.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes, they did.
MR. PARKER: Okay. Another question, then, is around this idea of having, I guess, non-partisan people in the returning office or even non-partisan people as poll clerks or as DROs. As you mentioned, it is difficult for political Parties to find enough good, quality people who can do the job. There's no sense in putting just a name forward for that purpose. They have to be capable or able to be trained to do the particular job.
Even people who are working in the returning office are coming from somewhere and they probably have their own political views or bias or whatever but how do you get enough people? I guess your recommendation was that it should be taken out of the hands of the political Parties and the returning officer - he or she - would then recruit people, I guess, much earlier than the election campaign. Is that how you would see it happening?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I think there are a couple of things that could be done. I have no problem with anybody recommending election officials. The Parties could certainly recommend, if they had them to recommend. I think that it's not a case of prohibiting that, I don't mean that at all. We need to expand the opportunities for people to know that they can work and to get them trained early, so that people can participate if they choose to, not having to wait until - I mean the lists don't even have to come to the RO until 10 days before the election, which is way too late.
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Advertising, like advertising of what it means to be a poll official, seeking ads in the paper, on our Web site, at any number of places, telling people about the opportunity, telling them when they're needed, telling them what they get paid and then setting up training, probably offered out of our office, at various places in the province to get them involved so that they can take the training, so that they're interested in being involved. They could be involved, something like that.
MR. PARKER: I can certainly see some merit in doing something like that. You get better trained people is the end result. I think that generally, political Parties are finding it more and more difficult to not only find enough workers in their own campaign but then, in addition, have to find other people who will work on election day in the polls. There are only so many volunteers, there are only so many people - I guess they're not really volunteers, they're getting paid, the DROs and the poll clerks. But there's some merit in having other methods of finding people other than through the political Parties, for sure.
If an election were called today, is your office ready for a campaign?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes, sir.
MR. PARKER: Ready, willing and able to go, okay. I guess you have to be, don't you?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes, we do. I welcome you to come and visit our office.
MR. PARKER: Okay. No, I just thought that - and I guess like a Boy Scout you have to be prepared, you always have to be ready, don't you? Okay, I'll leave it at that, thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Parker. Ms. MacDonald.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Thank you. I have to say I was really impressed by the operation when you had your open house. I was quite amazed at that warehouse. How many staff do you have at Elections Nova Scotia?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Well, that question is a little difficult to answer because we have a number of people who are not permanent. I believe right now we have 15 permanent positions. Our staffing changes dramatically, depending on what the activity is. For instance, at this moment we have approximately six additional people working in a data-entry capacity at the office. We, from time to time, engage - they're usually from the returning office environment. They're either typically the RAs, the revision assistants, who are responsible for the computer component of running an election at the local level. They often come into the office and do data entry, they work on cleaning the list, which is really dealing with duplicates, that kind of thing.
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Right now, we have taken all of the data from the poll books, from the municipal election in HRM, and we didn't get those in digital form so we're taking all of the poll-book entries, which is people who are added to the list on election day, or the advance poll, and all of the voter information cards that were returned, to investigate what the problem was with the card. So we have people who actually - and that's manual work. It's very difficult to do it, it's impossible to do it otherwise. So that kind of thing is up and down, depending on what we're into.
The returning officers also now work off and on all year. They do special projects which are usually related to the list or their geography, or election readiness, which is making sure that their polling stations are available, that their returning office is identified. We have a very complex appointment process so we need to know where returning offices are because you need to be able to furnish them, put the technology in them, the supplies, the Internet, the phones, everything, within the 72 hours.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: And what's the budget that you have annually, approximately?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Election budgets are separate. The budget is around $3 million.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Given that there's a distinct possibility that there will be an election in 2009, I'm wondering if you're looking at changes for an impending election, if that's realistic, or if we would be thinking about for a subsequent election. For example, there are so many things you've presented that are interesting, like Saturday elections for example, but could those changes happen and make it possible for an impending election, do you think?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Well, it depends what the change is, probably. The Elections Act right now has a clause in it that says no changes to the Elections Act have any application to an election held within six months. What we have to do with that is deal with that provision, because it addresses exactly the problem you're speaking to which is implementation. If it's in my office, it's not a big deal. If it's in the field, it's a big deal. Changing the date for an election from a Tuesday to a Saturday, we'd have to think that through because it changes the entire election calendar and certain things happen on certain days - what does that do to the timing of the advance polls?
It's probably more complex than it sounds, but the problem is if you change something, you have to change the materials so those who are working in that environment know what the rules are. That's a very big deal and if you were in the warehouse you say everything is packed, so those are the books, those are the manuals and those are the things that have to change, so it really does depend on what exactly the change is.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Ms. MacDonald. Mr. Muir.
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MR. MUIR: Thank you, this is very, very interesting. Two or three things that you've mentioned - obviously the older population in the province, because I think by 2025 or 2026 or something, there are going to be a whole lot of people in that seniors category - I think it's something like 25 per cent of our population or something like that. I don't know but they seem to be your voting population, so clearly we're going to have to make some adjustments - you used the term "accessibility" - making voting accessible to them.
The other thing I wanted just your observation on, because you did mention it, is it seems to me a number of these problems would not necessarily go away but they would be minimized, it would make the job of the election officer simpler if there was a fixed election date. The administration, I'm not talking about whether you like fixed election dates, but simply administratively it would make a lot of these things - including going out and recruiting people. I know in my own constituency we try to get workers inside that election period and it turned out in our constituency not only were we getting them for whatever it was, we were trying to get them for everybody and all kinds of them.
What do you think about the idea of a fixed election date? I don't know if that's fair to ask you as an administrator or not, but . . .
MS. MCCULLOCH: It's not. (Laughter) From an administrative point of view - and I can't comment that everyone is aware of the value that is apparently placed on being able to determine the timing of elections, so I can't speak to that, but I can speak to it from an administrative perspective. I would just say on that front, while you have a minority government it doesn't much matter anyway, they don't help. What they do is in a minority situation they tell the world, the voters in Nova Scotia, that we generally are on a four-year cycle, so you can expect an election every four years, not maybe every year. But they also, because of the nature of a minority government, they don't have any impact beyond that.
From an administrative point of view, what they do is give predictability to all of the things we do. It means that with predictability you can do a whole lot more planning, you can get ready for an event as opposed to a possible event that may or may not happen twice a year, it means that people can be trained differently, it means that initiatives between election readiness can be undertaken. There are all sorts of projects I'd like to do, but I'm very restricted in what we can undertake because our main job is to make sure that that election gets delivered.
Election readiness is not a static thing - you know, get ready, then sit there. You get ready, you update and do continual improvement to what's ready so that you don't stay static, but your ability to change anything is limited because you have to be ready, that's really what you're there for. So there are a lot of things that would be easier and probably of better quality if there was predictability on when an election would occur.
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MR. MUIR: I guess the follow-up to that is thinking things through and perhaps what Mr. Steele said about the election lists, that when they are compiled in a very compressed time frame, I don't know how you get more time to do that. What do you have to be, a resident for six months to vote, or something like that?
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes.
MR. MUIR: Whatever period of time it is, but you don't know when the election is, you've got that very compressed time frame to work with. I think some of these things you've mentioned, unless it was a fixed date, it's going to be extremely difficult to deal with, and of course notwithstanding the time we're in now, when we have minority governments. Anyway, it's a difficult challenge.
I thought this an interesting thing, bring your kids to vote was kind of a neat thing. Do they do that in any other places? I've never heard of it before, it's kind of a neat thing.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Oh no, we're leaders on this one. Actually, I shouldn't be so quick to say that because there are some jurisdictions that are doing very interesting things with the education of young children. The problem we ran into was there are a number of people now who bring their children with them because they have no choice and it has never been a problem, when people were behaving reasonably, but the problem we encountered was that our legislation very precisely says that no one is allowed in a polling location unless you're listed, and it's a finite list.
[10:00 a.m.]
What we did last year was amend that so people could come into polls for educational purposes, if I was agreeable to that, as the Chief Electoral Officer, as long as it was done for education reasons. You have to be careful about order in a polling location, you just can't have anybody walking in there doing whatever they want. We did that amendment a year ago, so this is in response to that because we couldn't very well run a program encouraging people to bring their children to vote when you couldn't legally have those people in the polling locations. So we did the amendment and now comes the program, which is not ready yet, but . . .
MR. MUIR: The other thing you mentioned that I think is pretty obvious probably to everybody, is that Act was written - the majority of it - when the whole context of what an election meant was a little different than it is today and I expect it probably does basically need to be redone. How long would that take? Between now and 2011? (Interruptions) Well, that's another two years.
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MS. MCCULLOCH: Actually the question is a difficult one to answer because it's about resources. If you had the right resources, including the right budget, and the mandate of a particular group of people to do that, you could do it.
MR. MUIR: Do I have time for one more question, Mr. Chairman?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Sure.
MR. MUIR: If you were to change three things, what would be the three things you would change right off the bat?
MS. MCCULLOCH: That's really not a very fair question. (Laughter) I would probably address special balloting because I think that's probably a serious concern. I would probably remove the political aspects in the appointment of election officials, from the top to the bottom. I think that Elections Nova Scotia can do some valuable things on the voter engagement front. I would probably address that mandate in legislation.
MR. MUIR: Thank you.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you, Mr. Muir. Just a few questions, Christine. I realize the concept of removing the politics from the appointment in elections but in rural Nova Scotia, no one is neutral. In Richmond County, no one is neutral. If you're going to let the returning officer pick the election workers, you're going to be in for a whole new nightmare even bigger than the nightmare you think you have now. All of a sudden, you're going to have the Parties attacking the returning officer, saying that he or she is putting in Tories or putting in Liberals or putting in NDPs, which I think is unfair to the returning officer because they're probably just trying to do a good job and taking whatever applications come in, without being able to control what someone's political beliefs or what their political involvement may have been. So I would caution that suggestion because I think you're setting up your returning officers for one big nightmare, especially in rural Nova Scotia.
In the city, it might be a bit different because people aren't really aware, don't have the intimate knowledge that they would, whereas in Richmond County anyone you name, I could probably give you a history of how their families voted or how their parents have voted or whether they've been a card-carrying member of any political Party.
MS. MCCULLOCH: I take your point, I agree. Then if having - and I do agree - one of the things that could be done is to move the requirement to identify workers to an earlier point in time. I'm not trying to get rid of sources of election workers. I'm trying to open it up so we can get more input into this because the bottom line is in many places in the province it is very difficult to get sufficient people to open the polls.
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So maybe the amendment is to push the time frame forward. It's 10 days before election day, which is just not early enough, so maybe it has to go out to an earlier day. Maybe it should be outside the election period; maybe there should be an ongoing list that's provided that's kept up-to-date; I don't know. The problem is that there aren't enough people who can step up to do these jobs.
MR. CHAIRMAN: That's a challenge with moving the date earlier because in many cases for the Party it's a matter of finding someone who is not working. The case is that someone may say okay, I'm working today but I can't commit to you in three weeks time whether I'll be working or not. So in many cases it comes down to a last-minute decision of, is the person available for work or not or are they currently working? So that is a bit of a challenge.
I hear what you are saying but I would caution going too far or beyond the election period in appointing people, because of the fact that there are the issues of being able to find people, to start off with. I hear what you're saying but I would throw caution there as well, that especially in rural parts that could open up your returning officers to a lot of problems.
This may not be a fair question but I'll throw it out there just the same; I think you've gotten all sorts today. Do you still see politics being involved in the appointing of returning officers? The reason I ask that is that I don't remember the last time when I've heard any of the political Parties attacking the government for making an overt political appointment of returning officers. My impression in my 11 years here and having run in four elections, that returning officer - even though they may have had previous political engagement, that I've yet to see a complaint in the last four provincial elections of a candidate or a Party saying, this returning officer was overtly political or was obstructionist or did cause me grief because of their political allegiances of the past. Is that still a concern or is it most just an optics recommendation from you, that it be removed from Cabinet's powers?
MS. MCCULLOCH: What has been done since I've been Chief Electoral Officer is that when a vacancy occurs, I advertise, I conduct a merit-based competition and I make a recommendation. I wouldn't recommend somebody who I didn't think could handle the job. That's one thing.
I think the job of returning officer is far more complex that it used to be and people are less inclined to want this job because it requires skills that many people in the age range of those who are willing to stand for this job, haven't got. So it's a challenge for many people to do this.
The other thing is, we train extensively now and the training doesn't just talk about how you run a returning office. It talks about all aspects of election administration, including the responsibility to be objective and non-partisan in the job that's done. So the training is different, the appointment process is different.
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One of the issues that I run into, and it's less and less because the training is what it is and because I'm probably known for being a stickler for non-partisan behaviour in an election environment - some returning officers still do things that are political and inappropriate in a returning office environment. It's difficult for me to do much about it, unless I can get at that and I don't do performance reviews on returning officers because I can't do anything about it. I can't change them - unless it's overt, improper behaviour during an election, it's very difficult.
Some returning officers don't perform very well, I can't do anything about that. Usually what happens is they don't do their job very well but they drop their job down to other people working in the office. So I think I could do this fine myself, in the process that I run now. I don't know why it needs to be by Order in Council and I don't know why - I don't know what value that particularly brings to the environment.
MR. CHAIRMAN: But if I'm hearing you correctly, other than having the appointment power yourself, there's obviously room to make changes to give you greater authority over the administration of these returning officers, without addressing the actual appointment issue. Would you agree that there is a possibility there to strengthen your powers from what you have right now?
MS. MCCULLOCH: I suppose, but I don't understand why. I don't appreciate why it's important to appoint ROs at a political level. I don't understand what the purpose is.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm sure if we had some of the ministers here from the Executive Council, they'd probably have an opinion on that, but that's a decision that has been made over the years. Anyway, obviously there's an opportunity there for you to have more powers, when it comes to the administration side.
We've heard you talk about changes to the Elections Act and a desire for that for quite some time now, which leads me to ask the question then, maybe you'll deem it not to be a fair question but I think it needs to be asked - is the Election Commission working? Is that process that has been set up to recommend changes and to review the Act - is it working the way it should, or is it time for us to look at putting either a select committee or striking together a standing committee that would deal with this on an ongoing basis, with elected members being required to make decisions and bring forward legislation? Right now, I'm left with the impression that you're spinning your wheels and that you've been spinning them for quite some time and, with all due respect, a number of the changes you're recommending, to me, are not rocket science. Yet, for some reason, they're not coming forward.
Maybe you'll deem it's not a fair question to ask in your position but I'm left to question whether this process of having an Election Commission is working the way it should be, in light of the need to modernize our Elections Act in Nova Scotia.
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MS. MCCULLOCH: It's a fair question, actually. The Election Commission and the ability of the appointees to that commission to go back to the Parties and get input is a very valuable tool. The problem I have and the reason I supported the amendment to remove myself, in my capacity as Chief Electoral Officer, from the commission was so that I could move ahead with proposals on my own.
The commission brings valuable insight into a lot of the questions that come forward but the commission itself - the members are all busy people with jobs and they don't do the work. The work is done by me or my office, in terms of the research or the presentation of drafts or proposals or whatever it may be. It's a hugely complicated and time-consuming process, just because they want to know what the options are, they want to know what everyone else does, so it's a research project on a continual basis for me.
They don't meet often enough. The process is not aggressive enough. So yes, I do value their input because I think they go back into their Parties and they get valuable input but things don't move very quickly.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Would you see it as a positive recommendation that a committee of the Legislature would be appointed to look either on an ongoing basis or a select committee be established to overhaul our Elections Act in Nova Scotia? Would that be a more proactive way of getting the changes done that need to be done?
[10:15 a.m.]
MS. MCCULLOCH: I don't know that I would think one way or another about that. What I think is that regardless of what you do, whether it's a committee of the Legislature or a select committee or whatever it is, it has to have significant staff associated with it to do the research behind all of these kinds of proposals. So it needs to be staffed and it needs to have a budget so that it can move ahead.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I guess your message is that your current staff and budget is not sufficient to be able to deal with that.
MS. MCCULLOCH: No.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, so if it's going to be a committee of the Legislature, it has to come with its own staff and its own budget, to be able to make that a reality.
MS. MCCULLOCH: One of the things that I'm considering putting forward is that there be someone who does research and statistical work. One of the main reasons is that the commission can't function as effectively unless it has support because it can't do the work itself or doesn't do the work itself. Someone has to do the work for it to evaluate, to make
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recommendations. So it has to be in Elections Nova Scotia or it has to be behind any kind of proposal.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay. With the write-in ballots, are there any other changes being contemplated or have you reached your limit as to what you feel you can change under the current legislation?
MS. MCCULLOCH: With respect to the write-in ballot only?
MR. CHAIRMAN: Exactly, and again I come back to the issue of having to drag people to the returning officer to fill in the forms and take the ballot back and then go back and drop off the ballot, are there any other changes to that?
I understand what Mr. Parker has talked about, accessibility and all that. I see an opportunity for the Parties to be able to appoint special agents who are going to be responsible for being able to pick up a ballot on behalf of someone, take it to them, help them fill it out or get them to fill it out, and then take it back to the returning officer and that the returning officer will recognize that these people have specifically been given authority to do this.
For my community, considering the size of the riding and we have only one returning officer on the island, that would be a way of doing it. But having to drag people out to the returning officer, go back and bring them back, right now it's a nightmare and it's a tremendous amount of work. It's very inefficient, it's not environmentally-friendly with the amount of fuel being wasted doing this. Are there any ways of making it easier for the Parties to be able to get these ballots to people who are unable to get out to the polling station?
MS. MCCULLOCH: The write-in ballot is complex, the provisions are very tightly written. My ability to use it for the issue that you've addressed doesn't exist. There's no way to help that problem, using that process.
I think there needs to be an entirely different approach to the problem of accessibility for seniors or people who are shut-in. The write-in ballot was never intended for that and it doesn't work and it never will, just because of its complexity and the back and forthing.
The special balloting that was used federally and that was used in New Brunswick was to address that problem because write-in ballots - the standard write-in ballots - were really intended for absentee people - those who are in Florida or those who are in Korea or wherever it might be. It was never really aimed at that and it doesn't work.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Well, it works - it has been adjusted to make it work because that's all left because the old proxy vote is gone. You can't go get the doctor's slip any more and have someone vote. So really that is what has replaced the proxy vote and that's your
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only vote that's left for someone who can't get out to vote on election day or can't get out to vote at all. The write-in ballot is your only option.
MS. MCCULLOCH: Yes, that's right. That's the only option as the Statute is currently written, that's right.
MR. CHAIRMAN: And I guess I ask the question again - is there any means within that Statute of making that more friendly, knowing that the chances of us having any changes put in place prior to the next vote are very unlikely at this point in time, especially with the six month rule that the legislation currently has?
MS. MCCULLOCH: We are looking at attempting to use that more effectively for people in hospital and in long-term care. We are looking at that right now but it's very restrictive, unless you bend it beyond where it's really intended to go. It's a very difficult problem without new legislation.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Okay, and at this point in time there's no proposed legislation that has been drafted or prepared to address that specific issue.
MS. MCCULLOCH: No.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Just one final thing - I know some ridings have more than one returning office. What criteria has been used to establish which riding should have more than one? Is it a distance issue or is there a specific set of criteria used to determine that?
MS. MCCULLOCH: There are two - Inverness and Guysborough-Sheet Harbour that have satellite offices. Those have been in existence for quite some time and the criteria, as I understand it, are typically distance but really it depends on - I think that there probably could be others established if it was identified that that would be a valuable way to address - there's nothing in the Statute that I recall about it. If there's a need identified and the Chief Electoral Officer agrees that there is something that needs to be, that would be justified.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We had the presentation on electronic voting and I'm curious to hear your comments on what your impressions were on that presentation and any issues that the committee should be aware of, from your perspective, as a result of that presentation.
MS. MCCULLOCH: I think that electronic voting is something that will be in everyone's future but I see it as - I'm not sure that, first of all, we need amendments to our legislation because the only thing we have right now that would enable consideration of electronic voting is a section that allows the Parties to come to an agreement on the use of electronic voting in a by-election.
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I think probably with watching the experience municipally here that I don't think that legislation is sufficient to support electronic voting.
The other thing that I should say is it is very difficult to know whether there's a business case for this, only because in order to use electronic voting or to implement electronic voting you need a lot of infrastructure, you need business processes, you need design requirements, you need an evaluation of whether electronic voting respects the principles that are enshrined in our legislation now. For instance, there was certainly a question about authentication, meaning that in an electronic environment it's impossible to know whether the person voting is who is voting. It is impossible to know who is casting what vote.
In a polling environment the person walks in, casts a paper ballot, is identified and walks out. Authentication is a very interesting issue in an electronic environment. Things like secrecy of the ballot - those are principles that are enshrined in the legislation. I don't know, and this is currently a subject for investigation by all of the Chief Electoral Officers across the country, there's no electronic voting in this country at the federal or provincial or territorial level. So it is on everyone's radar at the moment and undoubtedly it would be very convenient. It would be very interesting to try and use it in an environment like the military or in a by-election, to do some kind of evaluation of whether it's workable. There would be a significant cost to it and there is a time issue as well - when it could be ready to be done, tried.
MR. CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. Are there any other questions from the committee members?
That being the case, thank you very much for your presentation and I'm sure we'll be calling upon you again, as we're finalizing our recommendations in our final report. We do have a presentation on the 29th from the Nova Scotia Teachers Union, they were unable to come in at the previous meeting date, so we have the 29th.
Committee members may also suggest that we set that meeting - it is currently scheduled from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m., that we establish the hours to be from 9:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m., with the idea being that after we're done with our presentation from the NSTU, that we can have some discussion about the final recommendations and how we're going to proceed on that.
Ms. MacDonald, you have an issue?
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Yes, Mr. Chairman, the NDP caucus is having a caucus meeting out of town on the 28th and a number of us won't be back on the 29th.
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MR. MUIR: We have one that week as well, Maureen, and I think it's that week, too, the day before. I know I'm out of town on the 29th, I'm going to Ottawa.
MS. MAUREEN MACDONALD: Yes, Public Accounts was cancelled that week because the PC caucus was having their meeting out of town.
MR. CHAIRMAN: I'm curious, Mr. Muir, do you know - is your caucus going to be away on Tuesday, the 27th as well?
MR. MUIR: I think it's Tuesday and Wednesday, Mr. Chairman.
MR. KEITH BAIN: I won't be around for the 29th. I notice you had it scheduled for the 29th, I'm not going to be around either. I'm down from the 24th to the 3rd of February.
MR. CHAIRMAN: We're looking now into February. Have we talked to the NSTU as to whether they could come in on the 22nd?
MS. KIM LEADLEY (Legislative Committee Clerk): I believe they can't.
MR. CHAIRMAN: They can't, okay. So that's moving us to February 5th.
MR. MUIR: Excuse me, do you want our witness to stay, or is she . . .
MR. CHAIRMAN: Ms. McCulloch has been gracious in attending all of our meetings so she usually stays until the very end. But thank you for your consideration. Ms. McCulloch is very accustomed to us by now so she knows she's free to come and go as she wishes.
How about the 5th and then we'll have to confirm whether Ms. Allen from the NSTU will be available. May I suggest that we schedule her presentation in from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. but we also allow ourselves to go until noon, so we can have a discussion after her presentation, as to how we're going to proceed with the final recommendations and the writing of the report. Maybe our researcher, Paula, at that point could give us an update as to where we're at and what else needs to be done.
MS. PAULA ROMANOW: Would you like a draft for that date?
MR. CHAIRMAN: It would probably be great for us to have a draft for that date, or even a draft prior to that date, so that members can have a look at it prior to the meeting on the 5th.
Again, I would urge members to turn their minds to recommendations they would like to see included in the report. As well, don't forget you've all received a package of the e-mail
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correspondence and mail correspondence that was sent to us, for your own review, prior to making those recommendations.
So at this point we'll schedule for February 5th and if there's any changes to that, we'll certainly make you aware of them right away. May I suggest as well that if we need to change that, that the committee authorizes the subcommittee to meet and to set a new date, if necessary. Is that agreeable?
SOME HON. MEMBERS: Agreed.
MR. CHAIRMAN: With that again, Ms. McCulloch, thank you very much and to all of our support staff who continue to join us as we move forward on this, I thank you very much. Our meeting is adjourned until February 5th.
[The committee adjourned at 10:28 a.m.]
