The committee met at 8 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Good morning, everyone.

I’d like to start by recognizing that we are meeting today on the territory of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations.

We are continuing our spring check-in meetings with the statutory offices, and today we’re meeting with Elections B.C.

With that, I’ll turn it over to Anton Boegman, the Chief Electoral Officer.

Financial and Operational Updates
from Statutory Officers

ELECTIONS B.C.

A. Boegman: Good morning, Madam Chair, Madam Deputy Chair and members of the Select Standing Committee on Finance and Government Services. I’d like to thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today, and I do appreciate your flexibility in scheduling this meeting around my travel schedule as a commissioner with the B.C. Electoral Boundaries Commission.

I’m joined here today by my deputy, Yvonne Koehn, who is Deputy Chief Electoral Officer for corporate services.

My presentation today will include Elections B.C.’s supplemental budget request for the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election as well as an update on our ongoing operational priorities. I anticipate that my comments should take approximately 20 minutes, after which we will have time to respond to any questions or comments from committee members.

I would also like to begin by sincerely acknowledging that our meeting is taking place on the traditional territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋin̓əŋ-speaking people, the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations. I acknowledge, with gratitude and respect, their stewardship of the lands that we are on.

I always appreciate having an opportunity to engage with committee members at these spring meetings. I find they’re a great way to share with you and, through you, the entire Legislative Assembly and citizens of British Columbia the work of Elections B.C. and how we serve the democratic processes in our province.

As noted, I’ll begin with the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election. This by-election arose following the resignation of Andrew Wilkinson as MLA for Vancouver-Quilchena on February 17, 2022. Following an order-in-council ordering the by-election, the writ was issued on April 2 with advance voting occurring between Friday, April 22, and Wednesday, April 27, with final voting day taking place on Saturday, April 30.

Final count was held yesterday with Kevin Falcon being declared elected as MLA for the district. Over 10,900 Quilchena voters cast ballots in the event.

The Vancouver-Quilchena by-election was an historic first for our province. It was the first by-election administered under the significant changes enacted through the Election Amendment Act, 2019, including implementation of a first-come, first-served model for election day voting.

Similar to what was previously only in place for advanced voting, it provides a much more efficient voter service model and quicker service to voters with fewer election officials required. It included the use of networked electronic voting books in voting places to strike off voters as they voted and pass this voter participation information in near-real time to candidates and parties to help with get-out-the-vote efforts.

[8:05 a.m.]

It included the use of tabulators, to automatically count voter-marked paper ballots at the close of voting — this allowed for the first election results to be reported within ten minutes after the close of voting, and 97 percent of all results were reported within an hour, which is usually when the first results would have previously been reported in a by-election — and the later close of general registration, to allow more voters to register or update their records prior to voting, allowing a more accurate voting day voters list and enabling Elections B.C. to mail a second round of updated where-to-vote cards to voters who registered during the campaign period.

Although a number of the benefits entailed in these legislative amendments will only be realized during a general election — for example, printing ballots on demand for out-of-district voters that can be tabulated and then counted on election night instead of at the previous final count two weeks following general voting day — the event was an excellent opportunity to test procedures, software and hardware. Any lessons learned will be fed into our continuous improvement process.

Conversations with voters during the event confirmed they were very comfortable with the new procedures and technology. Many voters commented that they found the new first-come, first-served process to be a great improvement. Others commented on how fast the voting process was. Many voters made it through the voting place from start to finish — so when they come in the front door and when they leave — in well under five minutes.

Per established practice, I wrote to the committee with our supplemental funding requirements for the by-election after it was called. This budget was created based on anticipated activities and using data from past events. As this was our first by-election under the new legislation, we anticipate seeing savings in a few areas, such as staff wages, due to the lower number of election officials being required. The actual costs for the event, though, will be published in my report to the Legislature on the by-election.

As indicated in my letter of April 7 to the Chair, we estimated our budget requirements to administer the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election at $773,000 over two fiscal years. The majority of this amount, $717,000, will be required to administer the event this fiscal year, so in 2022-23. Therefore, that comprises our event delivery supplemental budget component for the by-election. The remainder of the event delivery costs, $56,000, was required in 2021-22 and was covered through surplus in that year’s budget.

We also identified that we will require an additional $100,000 this fiscal year to fund the reimbursement of eligible by-election expenses for candidates and political parties. As you know, the provision for these reimbursements is that candidates and political parties that receive at least 10 percent of the valid votes in the by-election can apply to have up to 50 percent of their eligible election expenses reimbursed.

We have presented the budget requirements for the by-election by expense category in the third column of pages 4 and 5 of our budget proposal. Page 4 breaks down the budget of $56,000 for 2021-22, while page 5 shows a similar breakdown for the total amount of $817,000. That includes the event delivery component and the election expense reimbursement component that will be required in 2022-23.

In the 2021-22 budget in column 3 of page 4, it shows relatively minor expenses in support of by-election readiness, with the largest category being building occupancy costs for the district electoral office.

Looking at page 5, you will see that the largest budget item is $256,000, or 33 percent of the total by-election budget, for salaries and benefits. This is primarily for the temporary staff hired by the district electoral officer to work in their office, as well as election officials during advance and general voting.

Other significant cost categories are information systems, at $170,000, and office and business expenses, at $97,000. This latter category includes where-to-vote card postage and printing.

[8:10 a.m.]

The information systems budget is mostly attributable to the increased cost in information technology necessary to support the electronic voting books and tabulators. To provide you with a comparative perspective, on page 2 of the budget document, there is a table showing the planned budget necessary for Vancouver-Quilchena in relation to the actual costs for the 2019 Nanaimo by-election. Although the comparison is of budgeted costs, on one hand, to actual costs, on the other, I believe it is effective in providing context.

Typically, budgeted costs are higher than what will actually be spent in a by-election, as the budget has to account for all potential activities that may be necessary for the administration of that event. Each event is unique, and we look at number of electoral-district-specific factors in our planning model, including what the local costs are for office and for voting place rentals. Until the event is underway, however, we can’t be certain of what will actually be required.

The largest variance in the comparative table on page 2 is building occupancy, which reflects the high costs of renting office space in Vancouver in 2022 compared to rental costs in Nanaimo in 2019. Outside of the information systems and building occupancy variances, the budgeted costs for Vancouver-Quilchena are largely consistent with Nanaimo, and, for that matter, as well as with other past by-elections.

I will note that at this point, on April 28, 2022, I received a warrant from the Speaker for a by-election in Surrey South, following the resignation of Stephanie Cadieux as MLA for that district. Under the Constitution Act, that by-election must be called by October 28, 2022. When that by-election is called, I will again write to this committee with a supplementary budget request for that event.

I would now like to provide an update on Elections B.C.’s strategic and operational priorities. First, I anticipate, very shortly, tabling in the Legislature my report on recommendations for legislative change, following the province’s 42nd provincial general election. This report, which is in the final stages of production, draws on our lessons learned from the October 24, 2020 provincial general election and incorporates input received from key stakeholders as well as from our consultation on this report with the Election Advisory Committee.

As I have noted in previous committee meetings and in my official report on that event, the 2020 provincial general election was unlike any other in British Columbia’s history. Despite significant administrative challenges resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, the election was safe, secure and accessible, thanks to the tremendous efforts from election officials, from voters and from political participants across the province.

Our work on our recommendations for legislative change report was also shaped by several key factors. First, we had just received significant amendments to the Election Act in 2019. Any new recommendations that are identified, of course, must integrate with and work in alignment with these previous amendments. Second, we had to ensure that any recommendations were not simply a reaction to the unique circumstances of the 2020 election but rather addressed issues that we expect to continue into the future. In essence, they must work to strengthen our democratic processes in any future election.

I anticipate that our report will highlight two priority recommendations as well as a number of technical recommendations for legislators to consider. Priority recommendations address fundamental and critical aspects of our electoral process, whereas technical recommendations focus on addressing recurring administrative problems that can only be addressed through legislative change.

[8:15 a.m.]

I would like to highlight for this committee some of our thinking on these priority recommendations, as was discussed during our March 1 meeting with the Election Advisory Committee and as has been published as the minutes to that meeting on our website.

Our first area of focus will be around improving the accessibility, the efficiency and the integrity of the vote-by-mail process. Mail-in voting has been part of provincial elections in British Columbia for over 30 years. In 2020, the number of vote-by-mail package requests was unprecedented and vastly exceeded anything seen previously. There were several factors that drove the increase in mail voting. Many voters preferred to vote remotely during the pandemic for health and safety reasons and for convenience.

Voters in British Columbia are very familiar with the vote-by-mail process, having voted in previous provincial vote-by-mail referenda. It remains to be seen whether interest in vote-by-mail will remain at the very high level we saw in 2020. In a survey conducted towards the end of the 2020 election, 55 percent of provincial respondents said they were interested in voting by mail in the next election regardless of whether or not the pandemic continued. However, our recent experience in the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election showed vote-by-mail at a similar level to pre-pandemic events.

Regardless, a number of key enhancements should be made to the current process to improve the efficiency of potentially high-volume vote-by-mail processes to increase accessibility and service levels to voters and to enhance electoral integrity.

I anticipate that the priority recommendations for vote-by-mail will focus on three things. On modernizing how voters prove their identity when voting by mail — for example, enabling them to provide digital ID options, such as uploading an image of their driver’s licence when they request their vote-by-mail package….

Improving the accessibility of vote-by-mail by providing voters with more options for returning their vote-by-mail package. Here, the main theme would be to formally allow, through legislation, voters to return their package to any voting place in the province, like they were allowed to do via order of the Chief Electoral Officer during the 2020 election.

Then, also, formalizing the process for the correction of inadvertent errors that voters make when completing their voting packages that would otherwise disfranchise these voters. This model was used previously in the 2018 referendum on electoral reform.

Our second area of focus related to the adjudication of write-in ballots. In modern election campaigns, party leaders have increasingly become synonymous with their party and with its campaign. They are the focus of a large portion of the party’s advertising and messaging to the public. While in our Westminster-style parliamentary system voters do not directly vote for a party leader when they cast their ballots, some voters may think that they are voting for a party leader and write that name on their ballot. I believe that in these cases, a voter who writes the name of a party leader on a write-in ballot wants it to be counted for that leader and for that party. But to establish this clearly in our legislation, legislative change would be necessary.

In addition to these two priority areas and the technical recommendations, the report will also likely speak to a number of election administrative public policy questions for legislators to consider and will also provide an update on my May 2020 report, Digital Communications, Disinformation and Democracy.

I sincerely hope that committee members will pay close attention to the entirety of my recommendations report once it is tabled in the Legislature. Should any member of the committee wish for further information on any of the material, I would be more than happy to follow up with them at a later date.

[8:20 a.m.]

I will now move to provide an update on our activities in support of Elections B.C.’s strategic priorities. Central to our strategic plan, we have six core priorities: to deliver events; to modernize electoral services; to improve accessibility and inclusivity to electoral processes; build organizational capacity; and of course, protect electoral integrity.

These priorities drive our project selection, our operational activities and, indeed, our work on a daily basis. At this point in our fiscal year, although it’s early, I can provide a number of updates on each of these priorities.

For event delivery, our current focus is on closing out the Vancouver-Quilchena by-election, preparing for the pending Surrey South by-election and continuing preparations for our administration of campaign finance and election advertising requirements for the October 15, 2022 general local elections, which, of course, are under the Local Elections Campaign Financing Act.

In addition to these known events, we also have to maintain our ongoing readiness for other on-demand events, including those under the Recall and Initiative Act.

I’ve already provided you with some detail about the administration of by-elections under the new Election Act, including benefits for voters and political participants. In terms of our preparations for the general local elections, Elections B.C.’s campaign finance team has been working diligently to update informational guides, provide training sessions to local financial agents and newly registered elector organizations, as well as preparing to oversee these new rules for third-party advertisers and elector organizations in readiness for the start of the pre-campaign period on July 18, 2022.

Currently there are 28 registered local elector organizations, who now must publicly report on their annual activities and expenditures in a similar fashion to registered provincial political parties. During the general local elections, we anticipate that we will contact, provide information to and receive financial reports from over 3,500 candidates across all local jurisdictions.

In addition to our work implementing technology in the voting place, a key project supporting our priority of modernizing electoral services is the candidate nominations application system. This application — which we call, inside Elections B.C., CNAS, of course for the acronym of the letters beginning each word — will allow provincial candidates to fulfil their nomination requirements electronically and then enable parties to review this information and provide endorsements through the application.

Development has continued on this project, and following several rounds of client and user testing, we’re looking forward to implement final modules and launching the application soon.

Our priority of improving accessibility and inclusivity in electoral processes is also seeing a recent focus. In support of this priority, we’ve continued our development and expansion of the list of future voters, which was also enacted as part of the Election Amendment Act, 2019.

I’m very pleased to be able to tell committee members that through our engagement efforts to eligible 16- and 17-year-olds earlier this year, there are now over 8,000 future voters registered on the list. Before our engagement efforts began, to provide context, there were around 200 to 300 future voters on the list.

These youth, now, will be automatically registered as voters when they turn 18. Indeed, over 1,000 current voters in B.C. right now in the 18-to-24 age category first registered with Elections B.C. as future voters and have now been permanently enrolled on the voters list.

I look forward to seeing continued growth in both future voters and in that 18- to 24-year-old voter segment on our permanent list moving forward.

[8:25 a.m.]

Also supporting this priority, we have continued a number of outreach and education programs focused on youth, on people with disabilities, Indigenous peoples, new Canadians and people living homeless. These groups, of course, face higher barriers to their participation in our democratic processes, which requires ongoing work and focus.

We’ve recently been prescribed as an organization subject to the Accessible British Columbia Act, effective September of 2023, and we’ve begun working to implement the requirements of this legislation in advance of that deadline. As we noted in our fall meeting with the committee, building organizational capacity has seen focused effort in 2021-22 and will continue through this fiscal year.

Last year, we embarked on a comprehensive organizational review of a number of program areas, including electoral operations, voter services, campaign finance, electoral geography and information technology. The outcome of that review is a reorganization of some program areas and a firm realization that a reinvestment in human capital was essential, which was reflected in our budget request for this current fiscal year.

It’s imperative that Elections B.C. be able to effectively support new legislation so that we can better manage the increasing reliance on technology and information systems that are essential for robust election management in today’s environment and to enhance our ability to maintain campaign finance compliance and integrity. This year, we are continuing our efforts in these areas and have already realized real benefits in terms of risk mitigation of processes and staff engagement.

Last, we remain committed to actively addressing existing and new challenges to democracy, to voter trust in institutions and electoral integrity that are posed by cyberthreats in the digital communications environment. These threats are real and include deliberate disinformation, attempts at foreign interference, non-transparent advertising at both the provincial and local level, and other deliberate, coordinated behaviour. It’s noted that my May 2020 report Digital Communications, Disinformation and Democracy: Recommendations for Legislative Change remains in front of the Legislature, and I continue to encourage you as legislators to consider the issues discussed and the action steps detailed in that report.

That concludes our spring presentation to the committee. Madam Chair, Madam Deputy Chair, we’re now happy to respond to any questions or comments the committee members may have. Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): Thank you, Anton.

I’ll now open it up for questions. The first hand I see is Pam.

P. Alexis: Good morning, and thank you so much for your comprehensive report.

I have a question about drivers’ licences. About four years ago the statistics for young people — say, up to the age of 30 — about 25 percent of them don’t have drivers’ licences. I think the trend is continuing, and that’s a phenomenon we’re seeing right across British Columbia. It’s not just an urban thing. It’s even in rural areas as well.

Does that at all make you worry about registration or capturing or mail-in ballots? Just if I could have comment about, perhaps, contingency plans with respect to, say, mail-in where you’re looking for a driver’s licence photo or something like that.

A. Boegman: Sure. That’s a very good question. In fact, that understanding and realization of that issue was partly what drove some of our priority recommendations in 2018, one of which was to enable Elections B.C. to have access to other government sources of information that we could use to expand our ability to capture information on voters that would enable them to update their records.

Through that, we have signed a memorandum of understanding with ICBC, which is the holder of information not only for the driver’s licence but for the BCID card and for the B.C. Services Card information for voters. We found that, while younger voters may not have a driver’s licence, they often will have BCID, and they for sure will have a services card with a photo on it.

[8:30 a.m.]

We’re now able to gather that information. We’re able to use updates from any of those systems to update our voters list. And because we have that information now as a shared secret with those voters, we can use that information as an identity integrity check in any of our processes.

P. Alexis: Thank you so much. It’s really comforting to hear this, so thank you.

M. Starchuk: Thank you for your presentation. Thanks for the new acronym that we have to come up with. We need more of those.

I have a number of questions, but I’ll just ask one and let it go around the room. With regards to the by-election, you made it very clear that counting the ballots was extremely quick — ten minutes to do all of that. But was the mail-in side of things the same? I’m just thinking about the last election, where there were dates and deadlines, envelopes that had to go inside the other one — that procedure. Was there any fine-tuning that was done for that part of it?

A. Boegman: I will certainly speak to some of that. Yvonne, you may wish to add on if I miss some of the details on it.

We did have a large focus in our process review following the 2020 Election and in the thinking prior to the report in 2018 on how we would manage that. I think, certainly in 2018, there was no expectation or even thought that we would have over 30 percent of ballots in a provincial election be through the vote-by-mail process. But in the by-election we were able to pilot some processes and put in place some things that enabled the vote-by-mail ballots to be reported at initial count — as indeed, they were perhaps the ones that were reported within ten minutes.

What we did was…. We’re doing that centrally at Elections B.C.’s headquarters. We had a process beginning at 9 a.m. where representatives of parties were then able to come in, and we started the processing of those ballots early. We were able to separate the secrecy envelopes from the certification envelopes. We were able to take those ballots and run them through tabulators so that the information was captured and stored, and then, at 8 p.m., we were able to tabulate, produce the results tape and report those results.

So it was, obviously, a smaller number, but we used the regular tabulators that we had deployed into voting places. The anticipation is that in a provincial event we’ll use high-speed tabulators that will enable the vote-by-mail volumes to go through at a much faster rate. But, in essence, what we’re doing is we’re…. Because they’re received earlier, because we now have the real-time strike-off information, we’re able to make sure that the mail ballots we’ve received are singular for those voters, that they haven’t voted in other processes, and we’re able to start the preparation of those ballots earlier, such that they can be tabulated on election night.

That’s the anticipation for most of vote-by-mail ballots. There will, of course, be some that will be received right up to the deadline, either at the DEO office…. We send an Elections B.C. staff member over to the mail depot in Richmond to pick up any last minute packages that have arrived in the mail. These will have to be processed following the close of voting, of course.

During the by-election I think there were around 43 that were processed within, likely, half an hour of the close of voting for the by-election. Higher volumes may mean that that may take a little bit longer. But the new legislation anticipates final count beginning after four days following final voting days, opposed to the two-week time period. So I think in the combination with some of our improved processes with the ability to pre-process some of these vote-by-mail packages prior to the close of voting and the use of high-speed tabulators that we’ll be able to accommodate that count in a much more timely fashion.

Yvonne, I don’t know if I’ve missed anything.

Y. Koehn: That was pretty comprehensive.

M. Starchuk: Just on this topic, to follow up. I know that in the 2020 election there was a number of envelopes that were in the wrong spot, so they ended up being spoiled. There was a percentage that were, procedurally, excluded from the vote. What was that percentage this time?

[8:35 a.m.]

A. Boegman: I think we had five ballots out of about 390 ballots.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): Thank you very much for the presentation. As you know, I’m new to the committee, so in terms of previous budget requests, I know I’m not completely up to speed. I understand there was an increase to enhance staffing previously.

With the electoral boundaries and the potential — we presume, based on population — that there are going to be a number of more ridings, is Elections B.C. prepared to be able to scale up to that increase in a relatively short period of time?

A. Boegman: The process following the work of the Boundaries Commission essentially entails taking any changes to electoral boundaries that have been approved by legislators and passed as law and then reflecting them in our electoral geography systems.

There’s a two-step process. One is around the actual boundaries of the districts themselves. Elections B.C., for this commission, is providing a secretariat, and the geography lead for the Boundaries Commission is the cartographer from Elections B.C. who’s been seconded 100 percent to the commission.

The systems that the commission will be using to look at boundaries, when we begin our deliberations, will be the same systems that Elections B.C. uses. So in order to enable the new boundary set to be set to, for instance, a future state that we can then use, that process is relatively short. I would anticipate within a month we’ll be able to do that, including all of the necessary quality checks and making sure that the geography base that sits under that — the road networks, which are constantly changing, and these sorts of things — are realigned.

The second part of that is what we call the voting area redistribution. Voting areas sit underneath electoral districts and are, essentially, our electoral building blocks. They’re the group of anywhere from 400 to 800 voters that comprise that voting area, and all the voting areas together fit within the electoral district.

There will need to be a complete redistribution of voting areas across the province. This is a multi-phase project that not only involves work at headquarters but also involves quality assurance work with our district electoral officers in the field. They’re the ones who are the experts on the geography of their districts. They’re the ones who know that although there’s a road that comes in over here, this community should not be part of this voting area because they’re better connected to this other potential community over here, and that’s where they go to vote.

Typically, there’s one voting place. Voting areas are assigned to different voting places. So there’s that quality assurance process that has to happen.

The estimate I’ll give…. We haven’t completed our planning for this, but I would think it would take approximately a year, following the completion and the conclusion of the work of the Boundaries Commission to fully reflect the voting area boundaries within our geography systems.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): All right. Thank you.

May I ask one more quick question? This is just a basic question, and I just don’t know this. With the by-election, the building occupancy — what is that made up of? Is that the writ period, on both sides of the writ period? I don’t understand what that is.

A. Boegman: This is more Yvonne’s side, but I know she’s got a bit of a cough, so I don’t think she wants to take off her mask much. Building occupancy is just the costs of the…. Typically, it will include costs for rental for the district electoral office as well as for voting places that are rented. The costs for the district electoral office is, typically, the larger component of that, because we need lots of space for staging of supplies, for all of the staff that the district electoral officer needs.

During the pandemic, we typically get a larger footprint because we want to be able to space people out. And then that cost usually is larger also because we don’t know when the by-election will be called, and our mandate is that we must be ready.

[8:40 a.m.]

When we receive a warrant, we typically start looking for space, and we may rent an office for the entirety of that six-month period. Obviously, we’ll rent it likely for three months with an option to renew, or something like that. But we need to have that space for the by-election and to make sure that it’s there so we can ship supplies to it and do our staging out of that.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): That’s great. Thank you. That makes perfect sense. Okay.

R. Merrifield: Thank you for the presentation this morning. I love hearing the modernization aspect. I think that you and I had a conversation about that when you were canvassing right after the election — very exciting and good to see.

One of the aspects of the efficiencies that you had described…. Could some of that efficiency be attributed to the low turnout? Does it stand to reason that there would be the same efficiencies given a normal election and not just a by-election in which lower numbers are seen?

My second — I’m going to do 1(a), 1(b), 1(c) — is the mail-in ballots. Is there capacity now, with the electronic counting, to actually have polling as well? I know that there’s an aggregate kind of given with all the mail-in ballots previously. Is that now segregated into the different voting areas?

My third question is on the electronic ballot. Is there the ability to have different languages?

A. Boegman: Those are some great questions. Some of the questions, I think, at this point, we don’t know.

We haven’t looked into it, particularly the question about different languages. I know one of our projects we’re looking at right now is Indigenous languages and the ability to have Indigenous languages on ballots. It’s something that our other election administrators across Canada are looking at, particularly Elections Canada, at this time. But the ability, for instance, to have it in Mandarin or Cantonese or other languages that are used in British Columbia is not something we’ve looked at. But certainly, it’s something that we do have in the hopper to look at further.

In terms of the efficiencies, my sense is that yes, the numbers were lower, and that may have had some contribution to that. But we also, in the new model, have the ability to put the appropriate number of stations in a voting place to meet demand that comes in.

I tend to think more back on our experience during advance voting previously, where although we didn’t have the networked connectivity of the electronic voting books, we did have stand-alone laptops that we used to look up a voter in the provincial voters list. Then we printed the necessary labels that were required at the time to go into the voting books.

That process was still a very efficient process, because what it does is remove the requirement for some voters to wait in a lineup in a voting place, when other teams are sitting vacant. We found, looking back at previous and doing capacity analysis, that each team — of a voting officer and voting clerk — in the previous model was operating at less than 40 percent capacity throughout the day in terms of the number of voters that they could serve, based on the voting area assigned to that table and the number that actually showed up. So by enabling a redistribution of that unused capacity, we were able to actually have a more efficient model and have better service to voters.

You had one other question?

R. Merrifield: Mail-in aggregate.

A. Boegman: Maybe I’ll let Yvonne speak to this. I know that in terms of the ballot, it is possible to have different information captured through the ballot. The question that we will be looking at in the future is a balance between the information that potentially could be captured and the efficiency and accuracy of the process.

Every time there is a piece where an election official may have to do something else to the ballot — maybe like colour in two circles that could be read by the tabulator to attribute that ballot somewhere else — that’s one extra step in the process and one extra area for there to be an error. It is something that I know we’re looking at, but it’s something that we will consider more deeply in the future.

B. Bailey: Thank you for your presentation. I found it really interesting and appreciated the complexities that you have to deal with in elections that I really hadn’t been aware of before.

[8:45 a.m.]

I’m really interested in your implementing technology into the voting place and excited about that. I’m the Parliamentary Secretary for Technology and always pleased to see when things are modernizing.

I know, through my work, I’ve been learning quite a lot about the digital divide. I particularly hear frequently from seniors as to some of the challenges they face. I know that this is probably something you’ve turned your mind to. When you gave an example earlier of a driver’s licence being uploaded, I thought immediately of some of the people who are on the other side of that digital divide.

I wondered if you might share with us how you consider those types of questions and whether the client testing and user testing you described might be with some of those communities. I’d just be interested in learning a little bit more, please.

A. Boegman: I can speak to some aspects of that. Certainly, when we look at our processes, we look, potentially, at all of the voters across all age groups across different locations and how they may be impacted by a change in process. Our goal is to make sure that any change that we put in place does not create an additional barrier, potentially, for a voter but rather addresses challenges that we see, perhaps, for most voters.

As an example relating to the digital divide…. That’s a great question, and it’s one that is very close to a lot of our redesign. One of the key things that we’ve heard and that we’ve absolutely made sure we have in place is we have maintained a 1-800 phone number for people to call in during campaign periods with our voter services team, where they can access the same suite of services through a person as opposed to going online.

For someone who is very digitally literate who lives in an area where there is high-speed Internet…. For them, they would much rather go online, snap a photo of their driver’s licence with their iPhone, upload it to the system, get their new information. To them, that’s the service that meets their needs, at their convenience.

To a senior, particularly a senior perhaps living in a rural area of the province who doesn’t have high-speed Internet, they do have a phone line. By providing that human service to them, we’re able to provide them with the same suite of services that meets their need. We can talk them through the process. They’re still able to provide physical copies of ID, if they need to. But we found, for most seniors, they’re usually updated on the voters list at the right address for most of the time.

That’s just an example of how we do consider those real questions when we’re modernizing processes to make sure that that doesn’t introduce an additional barrier to some other voters.

M. Dykeman: Thank you for your presentation. It’s great to hear about the initiatives you have coming forward and the lessons learned throughout the process.

I have a question and a comment. My first question is…. When you were here last time, we touched a bit on voter education and education programs within the schools. You had mentioned at that time that with the pandemic, a lot of that had been moved online.

I’m wondering. With schools being back in and things returning in person, the news…. As people watched the elections in the States and then the elections up here, have you seen an uptick in demand from school programs or school-aged facilitators for those programs? Are they mostly online or in person, if you have that information?

A. Boegman: We do have a number of programs that we run with schools that I spoke to at the fall meeting. While those were required to be digital during the first stages of the pandemic, we’re happy to move those back to in person. We have a strategic partnership with a non-profit organization called CIVIX that puts on the Student Vote program, and we also partner with them to run Democracy Bootcamps for civics teachers.

When those are ready to move back in person, we’ll be there back in person with them. I actually love those bootcamps. I go there, and I’m able to speak to the attendees — who are, as I said, social studies or civics teachers, a key facilitator within the school place for the types of things that we do.

[8:50 a.m.]

Of course, the Student Vote program is one where the student gets to do a parallel vote when we’re having a vote provincially. They also work federally with Elections Canada. Because of the changes to enable the list of future voters…. There is now an action step that students can take, when we’re running those programs, with CIVIX. They can go in…. Instead of having the youth fill out a registration form that’s just unique to the Student Vote program, they can actually either fill out a form or go online and register as a future voter with Elections B.C.

Some of those programs we’re really looking forward to resuming once all the schools are ready for that. While our programs moved mostly digital, it’s that interactivity that we find is the most effective in having those programs in the schools.

M. Dykeman: Then my comment. You mentioned the write-in of a leader.

A. Boegman: Yes.

M. Dykeman: I assume those are on the mail-in ballots that come out earlier with that box.

An interesting thing that happened in the past election was in ridings where, for whatever reason, a candidate couldn’t continue and a new candidate was replaced before the cutoff. In some cases, at vote time…. Those mail-in ballots were quickly mailed in at the beginning, while candidate A’s name was there, but then when candidate B was replaced at voting time…. You’d be counting, and you’d see ballots with the past candidate’s name on it.

It happened in a few locations. It was interesting, then, during the time, when the observers would argue at the time: “No, this person meant to vote….” So it became: were they voting for the party, or were they voting for the candidate?

It’s something that, maybe…. When you’re reviewing the leader thing, you might want to look into that, too, if ballots are going to go out without a name and there’s still time for candidates’ names to switch. It created a really unique situation.

A. Boegman: Great. Thank you for that comment.

B. Stewart: That really is interesting, listening to the challenges that your organization faces and how often it changes.

One of the questions about the mail-in ballot…. I forget the time when…. You could request one, and you could mail it in by a certain deadline. You mention picking up ballots in Richmond. What I wonder about is the third party, which is Canada Post in this particular case.

How many of the ballots, after the deadline, are not counted? What’s the percentage from the last general election? Do you have an indication as to how much? I’m just not certain how reliable it is in terms of the deadlines that you’ve set.

A. Boegman: In the last provincial election, there were actually very few ballots…. I don’t have the exact percentage, but when you think that we counted over 600,000, I do not believe there were over 2,000, for example. In fact, there might have even been much smaller than that.

Maybe Yvonne can look at our report online while I just speak to some of that.

Part of the reason in 2020 was because we did expand accessibility for ways that voters could return those packages. We changed our messaging to voters throughout the campaign period to reflect what we felt their best options were to make sure that ballot could get to us and could be counted. As an example, I’ve already mentioned the use of any voting place in the province as a drop-off package. So you had someone who was isolating at home or who didn’t want to go into a voting place. They could have given that to a friend or relative, and that friend or relative could have brought that to the voting place.

We also enabled the drop-off at Service B.C. locations throughout the province. Many smaller communities have Service B.C. right in that community. That was another point where people could go to drop off their ballots.

[8:55 a.m.]

We did work very closely with Canada Post throughout the pandemic to make sure that we had a good understanding of how their channels were being met and where the ballots were coming from. I think for this election, in particular, the percentage that we received after the close of voting was very, very low, especially in relation to previous vote-by-mail events.

B. Stewart: Maybe if I could just ask another question.

In the by-election, you said you spent $170,000 on information systems and operating.

A. Boegman: That’s budgeted. We haven’t yet got what the cost would be.

B. Stewart: Right. Okay.

The question is…. When you say information systems, that’s just the computers on the desks. It’s not really the technology to advance electronic voting like the tablets that you were talking about, those type of things.

A. Boegman: That’s correct. It’s essentially the costs related to deploying technology and systems that we already have, for support of those systems, for the necessary backups and security measures that need to be put in place in order to make sure that they work well.

As you may recall….

Interjection.

A. Boegman: We had 4,000 returned late out of over 600,000, 0.6 of a percent.

The cost to develop the software, to purchase equipment…. You may recall that these were part of our supplemental budget requests for special projects, as we’ve submitted them over the past number of years, in order to implement Bill 43, the Election Amendment Act, 2019. That’s typically where the costs for development will go. When new legislation is passed, we will have a separate project to implement that. Once we’re in an event, the costs relate specifically to that event — to deployment, to maintenance, to updates, as necessary.

B. Stewart: Where I was going with that was just…. As you try to embrace technology and use that, what is…? I don’t know if you have a number. What do you see as the increased cost, in terms of your office, in terms of taking that across the province?

A. Boegman: I don’t have the exact numbers here.

When we did table our report in 2018, we included a business case at that time for these changes, particularly the voting modernization changes. Obviously, that was based, likely, on 2017 costs for a 2018 report. We looked at a two-provincial-general-election time frame. If we were to lease or to purchase tabulators and laptops for the province, in terms of over two elections, how would that be in relation to what the cost would be under the old model?

We will have lower costs in certain areas through the voting modernization process. The staffing model, in particular, which is the bulk of the costs for elections, will be reduced under the new model. We’re talking about that 40 percent efficiency target that we looked at before. We’re much more efficient. Instead of having, say, 20 stations in a voting place, we may have five stations. Instead of having 40 election officials, we may have 15 election officials — one for each of those stations, maybe two or three at the tabulators, the information officers, the supervisors.

There is a definite offset against the cost of technology, in terms of the staffing model. That was in the business case. We’re continually looking at the numbers — the cost of technology, of course, is falling over time — to make sure that the model is a viable model.

One of the other areas that we’re looking at quite closely and that we will be piloting in the general local elections coming up, based on a similar model put in place by Elections Ontario…. The writ was just dropped in Ontario for their provincial election, and this election will be their second election using a very similar model to what we’ve just done in the by-election.

[9:00 a.m.]

Their process enables them to lease their tabulators and laptops for the cost of shipping the tabulators to other jurisdictions — to local jurisdictions, to other provinces — and has proven to be a way of enabling that technology not only to be used once every four years and sitting on the shelf or then used in a by-election, but also to be used by other jurisdictions that typically receive public funding for their services as well.

We are going to be providing laptops and tabulators to as many local jurisdictions as we can. I think there are two that we’re looking at specifically, to pilot this. Given that now the local elections are on a two-year cycle as compared to the provincial elections, I believe that this model would provide great value to local administrations and enable better use of the technology that is necessary for the modernized voting place for other jurisdictions. That will help them also achieve their goals.

J. Routledge (Chair): Mike, I think, has one final question.

M. Starchuk: Yes. It’s regarding the local government election that’s coming up. Have there been any changes, significant or minor, between 2018 and 2022 with regards to financial compliance and spending habits?

A. Boegman: We haven’t seen…. Of course, there’s new legislation that we’re putting in place — primarily the legislation around electoral organizations, which is a very distinct change from previously. Previously electoral organizations were not required to register.

Now, as I mentioned, we have 28. Those that registered prior to the last fiscal year, of course, were required to file their annual financial report, much like provincial parties do, so that is in place. There are other changes around the reporting and some administrative monetary penalties that are coming for this election that were not in place in 2018, which will provide us with, certainly, more tools to ensure compliance around that.

I don’t have the full list in front of me. If you’d like more information, we can certainly follow up with a complete listing of what the specific changes are. But I know that much of the work that we’ve been doing now has been outreach to the financial agents of the electoral organizations to provide them with training on the new requirements for electoral organizations and the new requirements for election advertisers.

As I mentioned, the pre-campaign period is coming in, which is a new factor, and will require or enable greater transparency in election advertising prior to the beginning of the election period for that event.

M. Starchuk: If I may, I would like to get a little bit more information, because I’m getting asked on a regular basis as to how it applies, whether or not it’s how the financial donations come in or how the finances are actually spent, whether it’s operational, capital — those kinds of things.

A. Boegman: I can connect you with my executive director of electoral financing, who will have an answer to every question that you have.

M. Starchuk: Okay. Perfect. Please.

J. Routledge (Chair): Okay. I think that’s it for questions.

Anton and Yvonne, I’d like to thank you on behalf of the committee for checking in with us and reinforcing the notion with us that for democracy to be upheld, the voting experience itself has to be a positive one. It has to be a process that voters trust, and it has to be a process that is accessible and efficient to them.

Thank you for your work in making sure that that’s true in the moment but also anticipating, as the world changes, what needs to be in place in the future. Thank you again.

A. Boegman: My pleasure. Thank you very much.

J. Routledge (Chair): We will take a very brief recess before we move in camera.

The committee recessed from 9:04 a.m. to 9:09 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

J. Routledge (Chair): Before we move in camera for the latter part of the meeting, I do want to officially welcome Renee to the committee.

It’s a great committee, and I know that you’ll make great contributions. Welcome.

R. Merrifield: Thank you.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to move in camera.

The committee continued in camera from 9:09 a.m. to 9:24 a.m.

[J. Routledge in the chair.]

Votes on Supplementary Funding

ELECTIONS B.C.,
OFFICE OF THE AUDITOR GENERAL

J. Routledge (Chair): We are now in a regular session.

K. Kirkpatrick (Deputy Chair): I move:

[That the committee recommend Elections BC be granted access to supplementary funding up to $717,000 for the administration of the by-election in Vancouver-Quilchena and $100,000 for the purpose of paying election expense reimbursement claims to eligible candidates and political parties, for a total of $817,000 in operational expenditure in fiscal year 2022-23.]

Motion approved.

M. Dykeman: I move:

[That the committee recommend the Office of the Auditor General be granted access to supplementary funding of up to $1,570,000 for capital expenditures and $410,000 for operational expenditures in 2022-23 for office space redesign.]

Motion approved.

J. Routledge (Chair): Finally, the final motion, Brenda.

B. Bailey: I move:

[That the Chair advise the Minister of Finance, as Chair of Treasury Board, of the recommendations adopted earlier today and that the Committee’s recommendations be formally recorded and included in its next report on the annual review of the budgets of statutory offices.]

Motion approved.

J. Routledge (Chair): I’ll entertain a motion to adjourn.

Motion approved.

The committee adjourned at 9:25 a.m.