What goes on behind the scenes of preparing for an election?

While the usual preparation of procuring materials, hiring staff, securing locations, and more, happens every election cycle, this upcoming election added the additional focus of implementing technology.

“We’ve had a lot of change to our electoral law that has allowed us to use the technology around the voting process. So making sure that all of that change is reflected in our new processes, in our procedures, in our training materials,” Boegman said.

What specifically changed? The two big changes are laptops being used as electronic voting books and ballot tabulators. To ensure the process remains smooth and secure, Boegman explained plenty of testing, on top of the additional work of getting the materials itself, was a big part of the planning process.

“The tabulators, they undergo rigorous testing before and after they’re used. That testing is observed by the candidates. Tabulators are never connected to the internet, they’re standalone, there’s this air gap around those tabulators. They simply receive the paper ballot coming in, they count that ballot, and then the ballot drops into the ballot box underneath the tabulator to be stored,” Boegman said.

Beyond the office itself, plenty of work is also done to try and engage with voters to get them to vote, particularly with demographics like youth or Indigenous people who historically don’t vote as much.

“We did enumeration drives. We offered to do specific outreach, like we could come and do a presentation at the Native Friendship Center or at the College (of New Caledonia) to see whether or not they wanted us to do some some outreach for them to encourage voters,” Krueger said.

Prior to voting day, the workers also need to be properly prepared to make sure the voting process is a smooth one. While the training is of course complete now, it does take a considerable amount of time and that needs to be accounted for.

“We’ve had staff in the office since September 16, we have all of the training material to organize, and up to about 190 in our electoral district alone for training. So you can imagine preparing all of the training materials for 190 people, as well as the materials they need to vote,” Krueger said.

Advance voting is open from October 10-13, and will reopen on October 15 and 16 following Thanksgiving Monday.

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by Tommy Osborne

What goes on behind the scenes of preparing for an election?

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