Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand signs 338 writs for the 42nd general election. Photo courtesy Elections Canada, Facebook.
An indigenous political blog is saying there are more First Nations ballot shortages in the federal election than previously reported.
The special coverage in Indigenous Politics says 11 total aboriginal polling stations ran dry of ballots on October 19, with four of those in Saskatchewan.
Until recently, Canadian media had been aware of eight First Nations that temporarily ran out of ballots, including Beardy’s and Okemasis, Big River First Nation and One Arrow First Nation.
In the 100 days since the federal election, writer Lauren Boothby uncovered three further First Nations that experienced ballot shortages – Little Pine First Nation in northwest Saskatchewan, Lac La Croix in Ontario, and Wauzhushk Onigum First Nation in Ontario.
Boothby’s source from Little Pine told her some people walked out after they were told they’d have to wait for more ballots to arrive.
From her research, Boothby said one of the most striking issues for elections workers was that not all Elections Canada provisions – specifically with photocopying ballots – were communicated properly.
“There’s some kind of miscommunication where they didn’t know that they were allowed to photocopy and when I looked up the provision to allow photocopying it makes sense. It was only released one week before the election. I don’t know if Elections Canada had the time to train all of their employees about the provision to photocopy,” she said.
“I think maybe they realized last-minute, oh I don’t know if we’re gonna have enough ballots.”
Elections Canada acknowledges that First Nations in particular ran low on ballots. In the recently-released report on the 42nd General Election, Elections Canada skims over the remarkable mobilization of voters.
“We saw a 74 percent increase in advance voting; and some three million more Canadians voted than in the 2011 election, resulting in the highest voter turnout in more than 20 years. Early indications point to increased voting among groups who typically vote less than the general population, such as Aboriginal people and young Canadians,” the report’s introduction reads.
Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, acknowledged the challenges of the massive increase in voter turnout. His report noted that returning officers at polling divisions on many First Nations needed to reallocate ballots “from other polling divisions to deal with shortages at advance and ordinary polls.”
Boothby said she sees the shortages as a systemic problem because of how largely they impacted First Nations votes. She isn’t aboriginal, but said she felt compelled to expose these details through her research and story.
“I was just completely floored that in a democracy, that some people are not able to vote. And a lot of people think that this wouldn’t happen in Canada but it did. And it just really disturbed me so that’s why I wanted to investigate it,” she said.
The intent of her article on Indigenous Politics, was to fill the gap in the Elections Canada report.
“They do mention that there were some issues but they didn’t outline all the communities that experienced it and they didn’t indicate whether anyone had to use the photocopies,” she said.
While Boothby said Elections Canada don’t give near enough details, it’s important to note that Mayrand has a parliamentary report coming out in June.
Mayrand wrote that this report will not only involve post-election research, it will take into account “the first independent audit of poll worker performance. I intend to present a retrospective that examines the experience of voters, political parties, candidates and poll workers, as well as to make recommendations for enabling legislative changes.”
He specifically targets the issue of polling stations running low on ballots and a separate issue of smudged or pre-marked ballots, saying these will be further discussed in the retrospective report.
In total, there were about 11,000 complaints made in the 42nd general election. The report states that 7,700 of those have been resolved.