Whats to be saved? Time?
Lord knows we have enough of that!
Money?
Do we spend money on a lease from god knows where, or pay a few locals, who probable badly need the extra cash, and will spend it locally.
And, yeah, by the way, what about the ‘disposable volunteer’ secret meeting?
Junior, ask your Dad!
How much money to count how many votes??
Which bright spark came up with this idea??
Just plain dumb in my books.
How many people of voting age in this little town? Does anybody think there will be that many come next election ? I know that I won’t be here seeing everything that I have seen , just keeps looking like a redneck town where I do not wish to see my children grow but the wife keeps saying try a little longer. Voting machines will be like USof A .
I haven’t read the article and have no other knowledge of this issue, but if this issue is as simple as a vote on a voting machine then I believe there must be outside influence with the council’s decision. Why would an educated person vote to lease a machine which has such high consequences in some that is so important to the democratic process.
We send our own children to die imposing democracy on other nations by gun. Surely voting on something with so much power to circumvent the democratic process should be voted on by the people; or at least a public discussion and input to the council.
FYI.
I don’t have a huge problem with it, as long as the two following requirements are met:
- There has to be a paper trail & receipt system
and
- The voting machine has to have publicly-available source code for its software
If either of requirements isn’t met, then this is a bad decision. There are a lot of different types of voting machines, and many are just fine. It’s the “black box” ones that are dangerous. You have no idea if your vote is registered, or how the computer is counting your vote.
I’m not sure what the requirements are for municipal elections, but if they are the same as those for provincial elections, then there has to be a way for candidate representatives to view the vote being cast and ultimately counted. If that’s not possible, then there’s no way to use these machines.
Well there is the cost of this goofy idea, which will mean it will cost more to count the votes than the old paper system.
Kind of a wrong headed idea for a town that is supposed to be fiscally responsible.
Not to mention that at the rate our population is declining, it won’t be long before they can manually count all the ballots in less than an hour.
Of course we would need the compiler/interpreter source code for this software. And of course we need the source code to the compiler of the compiler/interpreter; so it must be GNU!!! 
Thanks 
From my understanding the proposal is to buy two machines for an estimated cost of $15,650. Manually counting ballots last election cost $4,845, including the ballots, while the cost of special ballots for electronic voting would be about $3,500, for a net savings per election of $1,345. On that basis, the payback on the machines is a little over 11 elections, in other words they should be paid back in 35 years if one ignores time value of money, which cannot be ignored. That assumes that they are still fit for use and technically supported by then.
The leasing option makes even less sense. Leasing the machines cost $4,750 and the ballots etc is 3,500 for a total cost of $8,250 per election. Again, the cost of manually counting the ballots last election was $4,845. So the incremental cost of electronic voting is $3,405 per election, ie 42% more expensive.
There is no cash savings here at all. Electronic voting is actually more expensive. Councillor Thorkelson gets points for doing the math and standing up for local employment at the meeting.
Of course the flip side is that the results would be available by about 9:30 rather than midnight. Personally I prefer the suspense of the hand counted results coming in over the internet. Most people, though, are probably content to do something else on election night and wait until the next day to hear the results.
My conclusion - this may be a plot of sorts to deprive a few podunkians from some extra cash counting ballots. But I suspect that the major push behind this is that some staff would be spared from having to work until midnight once every three years, thus conserving their strength so that they can toil that much harder for us the next day.
After finally reading the story in the paper and reviewing the comments here, there seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding for some.
These are not voting machines, they are vote counting machines. I assume we’d still be using paper and pencils for voting.
Right. The story was a bit unclear, but the objections remain the same.
Ah, ok, so you’d use something like punch cards or whatever to vote?
As long as there’s a physical ballot, then it’s not so bad.
My information on this comes from the blog e-princerupert.com/ where some council information has been posted for public perusal and to assist research. The proposed bylaw is the “Automated Voting Machine Authorization Bylaw”. There would be automated counting, but “special ballots” are required at a cost of about $3,500 per election, which I take to mean that there would be electronic voting, ie something other than paper and pencils.
Whether they are voting machines or counting machines is irrelevant, it’s the cost and the concept of using them in a town with such a small population.
Where is the logic in spending twice or three times as much to do a job just for the sake of an hour and half to two hours advance warning of the results?
There are many other things that council should contemplate allocating money towards than this idea.
Could be something as simple as punch cards. You punch a hole next to the candidate. No hanging chads, please.
This is a complete waste of money and time.
But it does serve a function: we’re spending our time talking about this and ignoring everything else.
Bingo, it is interesting isn’t it. It tends to deflect away from some of the more important of issues that our elected class could possibly tackle.
Maybe discuss why they dismissed that panel on health for the region, maybe take a walk two blocks west of City Hall and see if perhaps our downtown core isn’t starting to look like parts of Vancouver where no one really wants to travel to. Oh things like that…
Council voted down this dumb idea tonight, i know Kinney,Thorkelson,and Bedard voted aginst the motion don’t know the total vote breakdown,but obviously there were enough councillors at tonights meeting with some common sense.
Hoorah!
Just found an interesting site for comparing various things, amongst them a list of countries who still hand count ballots, their percentage participation, type of voting system, etc.
Councilor Garon also voted against!!!