A lot has been said about the electronic voting machine used in the 2008 Municipal Election. Most of which is negative; however, I would argue that the machines worked quite well, the issue is with the people working the machines.

These “mystery ballots” were special ballots that were not opened until election night. When the workers tried to feed them into the machine, it said that there were problems with the ballot. Well, with the voter not there to correct it, they simply stuck them in a drawer. That was an error on their part. They should have alerted other officials immediatly. But this is nothing compared to the next issue - ballot tampering.

There are stories of workers marking on the ballots so that they would be accepted by the machine (because the voter did not darken their choices enough). That is something I find quite disturbing. Would you want someone filling out your ballot? There is a reason the machine wouldn’t accept the ballot, and that’s why the voter should have gotten it back and been asked to darken their choices.

The worst part is that the ballots may now be tampered with, and it will be impossible for a judge to look at them and determine who marked on the ballot - the voter or the worker.

These machines work great as long as the people running them follow the rules. I hope this serves as a wakeup call to the election officials and will ensure that these problems are fixed in time for the next election.

Can you believe this?

A recount was held today to try and determine a winner in Ward 2. The result was a tie.

Incumbent Carl White and Patty Higgins have now agreed to request a judicial recount. They will each ask the judge to scrutinize up to 15 disputed ballots, rather than do a full recount of every ballot cast.

In the event of a tie after the judicial recount, the winner could be determined by drawing a name out of a box.

Now that’s democracy for you!

Last night, Councillor Stephen Chase was sworn in, then promptly chosen as Deputy Mayor by Council.

This comes after rumors that people were trying to change the way the Deputy Mayor was chosen.

On election night, Chase received the most votes (even more then Mayor Ivan Court).

I fully support the process in which the Deputy Mayor is selected, and I look forward to Stephen Chase keeping Council focused on getting the most “bang for our tax paying buck”.

Lately, there has been a great deal of discussion around the position of Deputy Mayor. Many people are trying to figure out if Stephen Chase will be the Deputy Mayor. There have been rumors that Ivan Court does not want this; but, could he actually pick someone else?

On February 12th, 2008, the following motion was passed by Council:

11.6 - Position of Deputy Mayor
On motion of Deputy Mayor Hooton
Seconded by Councillor Chase
RESOLVED that the current system of electing the Deputy Mayor which is the election of the Councillor who receives the most votes in the municipal election be maintained.
Question being taken the motion was carried

The important thing to note is that everyone on Common Council voted in favor of this motion, including Ivan Court.

This motion clearly shows that Stephen Chase will be the deputy mayor when he is sworn in for this new Council term.

Any changes to this position would require a motion to be made in the next session; but, would this be a motion that the people support? Since Stephen was elected with the most votes (even more votes then than Ivan himself), he has demonstrated his support with the people in this city.

I can’t see any motion to remove him being successful.

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.

The breaking news just in is that two previously rejected ballots have been counted, and both ballots were for Higgins.

On election night, White was declared the winner by a single vote. With these two votes now counted, Higgins is now ahead of White by a single vote. It looks like White will have the chance to see these ballots tomorrow, and he will have to decided if he should launch a formal judicial review.

I hope that White does appeal and there is a formal judicial review. White is the better candidate, and I believe that he would be the most capable on this new Council.

Country 94’s news item is below:

It’s like the weather around here - wait five minutes and it will change — well it’s a little longer than five minutes but the unofficial winner of the battle between incumbent Carl White and challenger Patty Higgins for a council seat in ward two here in the city has changed.
Returning officer Mary McAuliffe tells us while preparing for tomorrow’s preliminary review of the results with the candidates — two ballots previously rejected on election night were deemed sufficient be counted.

And as a result — White’s one vote win over Higgins Monday night has been overturned — Higgins is now the winner by one vote with a total of 2364-votes.

The candidates will view digital images of the ballots cast and can then decide whether to launch a formal challenge of the results.

The results are in for the Saint John 2008 Municipal Election!

Overall, the turnout was lower then I was expecting at 50.58%; however, 24,078 people did vote, and they did make major changes to Council.

I believe the big winners were Ivan Court and Stephen Chase. Court was elected as the new Mayor of Saint John with 8850 votes, and Stephen Chase was re-elected at large with 9926 votes.

Below is our new Council:

• Ivan Court - Mayor (8850 votes)
• Stephen Chase - Deputy Mayor (9926 votes)
• Chris Titus - Councillor ‘At-Large’ (8486 votes)
• Peter McGuire - Ward 1 Councillor (3577 votes)
• Bill Farren - Ward 1 Councillor (2763 votes)
• Gary Sullivan - Ward 2 Councillor (2764 votes)
• Carl White - Ward 2 Councillor (2363 votes)
• Patty Higgins - Ward 2 Councillor (2364 votes)
• Donnie Snook - Ward 3 Councillor (1874 votes)
• Carl Killen - Ward 3 Councillor (1550 votes)
• Bruce Court - Ward 4 Councillor (2309 votes)
• Joe Mott - Ward 4 Councillor (1987 votes)

Note that there will likely be a recount in Ward 2 because Carl White only beat Patty Higgins by 1 vote. I guess we will find out how accurate the voting machines are after all!

Update: Patty Higgins had two previously rejected ballots counted in her name.  This puts her one vote ahead of Carl White.

Find out the full results here!

Today, my latest letter to the editor was published. I find it really disappointing how much they try to attack the one candidate who stands up for the taxpayers in Saint John.

Recent attack ads are uncalled for
Telegraph-Journal

This week, I’ve had the displeasure of listening to a special interest group’s attack ad on the radio. This group does not believe that the citizens of Saint John are able to decide who to vote for on their own.

To sway voters, they have launched attack ads on the radio. The person that they attack is Councillor Stephen Chase. Unknown to many, he is the councillor who made the historic motion to reaffirm the city’s commitment to public ownership and control of its water supply.

Stephen continues to support looking at all options in service delivery and selecting the one with the best value for the taxpayers - after all, it is our money that council is spending.

Shawn Peterson
Saint John

Last night, Campaign by the Clock took place in Market Square.

The event was organized by Fusion Saint John and the Saint John Board of Trade.

We were able to attract most of the candidates, including everyone running for Mayor, who took the time to speak with the people on-on-one.

Although we didn’t get a huge crowd, a few first time voters were out meeting with the candidates, which is something that I am very happy to see. I believe that every person that we can get out and engaged early on, is likely to keep voting as they get older.

For more information, check out the Telegraph-Journal’s writeup here.

Today, Stephen Chase set the record straight on the radio attack ads targeting him personally.

“I feel like I’m a prime minister in a federal election,” Chase said Thursday, referring to the very personal nature of Federal politics.

Who is responsible?

The radio ads are being played by the “Coalition for Concerned Citizens”, the same group that tried to boycott the Santa Clause parade in the past.

Bruce Court involvement?

Bruce Court’s brochures say that he is the chairman of the Coalition of Concerned Citizens, Unions & Small Business; however, he says that he stepped back from the group when the campaign started.

“It’s nothing to do with me,” Court said. “I don’t even know what the ads say.”

He said the correct person to talk to would be Linda Stoddard, who couldn’t be reached for comment.

Special Interest Groups Interference

“It’s all very interesting,” Chase said. “It’s unfortunate that special interest groups want to misrepresent my position for self-interest.”

Chase has come under attack before over his stance on the city’s water infrastructure. The Canadian Union of Public Employees has been distributing signs and pamphlets urging “no to water for profit,” while Chase says he has no intention of selling Saint John’s water.

He says he only wants council to look closely at whether the private sector can do a better, more cost-effective job running the filtration plants than the city’s union workers have.

Stephen’s Public Ownership Motion

Keep in mind, Stephen was the Councillor who made the motion to Council that reaffirms the city’s commitment to public ownership and control of the water supply. This is something that CUPE fails to mention in their disinformation campaign.

Chase wants for safe, clean drinking water

Chase says citizens want public ownership of the water itself and safe, clean drinking water - in both cases, he wants the same, he said. But if a private company can do a better job running the plants then council should consider it, he said. If the research shows that the union workers are still the best choice, Chase says he can live with that. But he says he won’t let the union management control the agenda.