Saskatchewan’s Chief Electoral Officer has recommended modernizing the province’s election system.
Dr. Michael Boda said that the changes would make Saskatchewan consistent with best practices and Canadian standards and prepare the province for democracy in the 21st century.
He said the province’s current system isn’t outdated, but it hasn’t changed much in its 100-plus years of existence.
“From 1905 up until now, the system has been quite similar, and it’s stayed very much the same,” he said. “The technology that I am recommending will be able to improve the integrity of the process so that we know who has voted across the province and determine more effectively that everyone is doing their duty of voting once and not more than that.”
Boda said that modernization would also improve accessibility for voters and make voting more convenient.
So what would modernization look like?
Boda said it could be split into three main recommendations.
First would see the province move away from an election day and towards an ‘election period.’
“You might call it voting week,” he said. “It would allow for a longer period of time, and there won’t be these distinctions between advanced voting and election day. We want to spread that period of time out and allow people to vote by mail as well.”
Boda noted that the province saw voting by mail increase from 1 in 100 people in 2016 to 1 in 8 in 2020.
The second would be to modernize the election process with technology using tabulators and an electronic poll book.
“Saskatoon and Regina have been using tabulators for more than a decade, but we haven’t been using them across the province. We would be introducing tabulators, not to every last polling location, but to many polling locations.”
“There is a manual strike-off, just a manual list when voters come in, and it is sometimes very difficult to find the voters on the list,” he continued. “An electronic poll book allows us to look you up very quickly or to just simply scan your voter information card and be able to move you along quickly.”
The final area would be to broaden access to voting.
“We are talking about introducing a limited approach to being able to vote anywhere in the province for your constituency. For example, if you lived in Regina, but you happened to be working in Swift Current, you could actually vote in Swift Current at a location for the candidates in Regina. That would be an important step.”
