Article content I just spent a week at our vacation spot in B.C. as their provincial election was launched.
The news, in part, involved touting the expansion of their electronic voting program to rural municipalities that would increase efficiencies and result in early reporting (staring as soon as 15 minutes after polls closed). On my return to Alberta, I was reminded that our UCP government had passed Bill 20 during the last legislature, banning the use of such efficient machines in the balloting process. This has hit the headlines in the recent Alberta Municipalities fall conference where the government was asked to reconsider that decision, to no effect.
It caused me to reflect on exactly what it was that drove this decision on the part of the governing party. According to the premier, “people want to go back to counting ballots the old-fashioned way, on paper.” What people want this? Where is the data? By all reports, the technology is sound — and, by the way, has withstood repeated legal challenges from a certain former U.
S. president and his team — and avoids the problems inherent with hand-counting. So this appears to be yet another example of this government creating a solution to a problem that does not exist.
Jon Rossall, Edmonton The recent report of the death of a motorcyclist, after losing control, hit me with both sadness and the thought, “why am I not surprised?” Let me explain. Recently, on the winding part of Groat Road, I had four motorcycles pa.