Recount in Saint John Ward 2

Today, CBC and the Telegraph-Journal wrote stories around the Ward 2 recount.

It looks like these rejected ballots were actually special ballots, ones that were filled out ahead of time, and not read into the machine until election night.

This was too late to detect the error in the ballots. However, even though there were problems with the ballot (in once case, someone marked two people for Mayor), the section for the Ward was marked fine.

These two ballots were set aside on election night by workers. It took until yesterday for these two ballots were finally looked at by officials in Fredericton.

CBC describes it below:

The problem developed when poll officers attempted to insert the two special ballots into the machine but the machine rejected them, Jones said.

The mayor section of the ballot had been spoiled though the councillor section was valid, Jones said. The machine recognized that part of the ballot had been spoiled and asked if that was correct and if the voter wanted to proceed with scanning the results.

But seeing that the councillor section was valid and unsure how to proceed, the poll officers apparently set the ballots aside, Jones said.

“Sometimes the machine doesn’t pick them up for various reasons and it tells them to take a look at something,” said Mary Aculiffe, a returning officer in Saint John. “They had set them aside in the spoiled ballots and when we took a look at them, we decided they were really not spoiled.”

The Telegraph-Journal describes it as a glitch; however, I don’t think that is the case.

A comment on the CBC article said it best:

Before people start jumping up and down whining about the machines.. If you read carefully you will see that the machine did its job and said there is something wrong here!! How do you want to proceed? And it was the election people that did not do their job and find out how to deal with it right then. The machine worked. The put the ballots aside and forgot about them.