I feel compelled to respond to the letter in the September 1st Cochrane Eagle written by Rocky View Reeve Boehlke on the issue of a voters’ list for Rocky View County. For starters, Rocky View’s electoral system, as is true for all municipal electoral systems in Alberta, does rely on the honour system. To vote individuals need to complete an affidavit swearing that they have not voted before in the election and that they are eligible to vote in the municipality and division. Yes, it is true that there are legal penalties for swearing false affidavits. However, since it is also widely known that no one checks these affidavits, they do not provide a particularly effective control over multiple voting and/or out-of-district voting. The only way they can be checked is by obtaining a court order, which costs upwards of $30,000/division. Experts who have studied voting practices and voting irregularities have consistently concluded that having a voters’ list is the single most effective way to minimize voting irregularities. Voting lists in properly functioning democracies do not limit citizens’ ability to vote. There are always provisions to permit voting for people whose names were legitimately missed in preparing the voters’ list. If voters’ lists were as unnecessary as Reeve Boehlke is claiming, it is not clear why they are used at the federal and provincial levels throughout Canada and in all provinces at the municipal level except in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I also believe that his assertion that the only generally agreed upon benefit of voters’ lists is to speed up voting in busy urban locations is misguided. As I mentioned earlier, experts have concluded that voting irregularities are minimized in the presence of voters’ lists. A voters’ list virtually eliminates the old practice of “vote early, vote often” since it is possible to determine while voting is still going on whether an individual has already voted or not. The sworn affidavit approach used by Alberta municipalities, at best, provides after-the-fact evidence of multiple voting – too late to determine its effect on the election outcome. The procedural improvements Rocky View County has promised to make in its electoral processes are better than nothing. I hope that these changes will actually be implemented as promised. I still cannot understand council’s reluctance to move forward with a voters’ list. Elections Alberta has indicated a willingness to work with the municipality to facilitate the creation of a municipal voters’ list. Council, however, has chosen to insist that it would need to do a door-to-door enumeration (a conclusion not supported in my discussions with Elections Alberta officials) and that this would be too costly and time consuming. As a resident of Rocky View County, I do not take comfort in our Council’s approach to this issue nor is it an approach that I can be proud of even if our Reeve believes I should be. Janet Ballantyne
