A total of 223 voters turned out Oct. 13, either before of after their Thanksgiving holiday turkey, to vote at the 12-hour advance poll from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. at City Hall on Mystery Lake Drive, senior election official Dave Turpie reports. Voters could choose one of two candidates for mayor; up to eight of 18 candidates for city council; and up to seven of 11 candidates for trustee spots for the School District of Mystery Lake.
A second and final advance poll is set for Oct. 17 at City Hall, again on the ground floor foyer. Voting time Friday is from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. For those unable to vote at either the advance poll or the general poll on election day Oct. 22, mail-in ballots are available from Turpie. He can be contacted by cell phone at: (204) 679-1000 or by e-mail at: canturp@mymts.net
Monday’s voting marked the debut of Dominion Voting Systems Inc. vote-counting machines in Thompson, intended to be much faster delivering results on election night than manual hand counting, although the advance poll ballots still won’t be tabulated electronically until the general poll closes at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 22. Dominion Voting Systems is a privately owned Denver-based company, founded in Toronto in 2002 by John Poulos and James Hoover.
Dominion’s system is a paper-based, optical scan voting system, mixing electronics and paper, by combining an analog paper trail of each person’s vote with quick digital tallying. The vote-counting machine rests atop a two-compartment ballot box, with one compartment used to hold ballots that have been tabulated and the other for the temporary storage of completed ballots in the event that the counting machine stops functioning. The machine alerts voters in the event that their votes could not be counted because they were blank or contained too many marks or were marked outside the voting area. Voters who make an error marking their ballots can request a new ballot from a poll clerk and have the original marked spoiled.
Turpie determined the name placement of candidates on the ballot by random lot Sept. 19 with the order being Coun. Dennis Fenske at the top of the mayoral ballot followed by Coun. Luke Robinson and for council the order of precedence as it appears on the ballot is: Kathy Valentino, followed by Coun. Judy Kolada, Julyda Lagimodiere, Blake Ellis, Paullette Simkins, Coun. Penny Byer, Lydia Blais, Malanie Bercier-Cutler, Erika McCarthy, Audrey Dufour, Coun. Brad Evenson, Robert Chuckrey, Colleen Smook, Dennis Foley, Ron Matechuk, David Erickson, Duncan Wong and Christa Herkert. On the school board ballot the order of names in precedence in which names appear is Sandra Fitzpatrick at the top of the ballot, followed by Clint Saulteaux, Doug Krokosz, Vince Nowlin, Janet Brady, Caroline Winship, Liz Lychuk, Leslie Tucker, Don MacDonald, Guido Oliveira and Ryan Land.
The City of Thompson and School District of Mystery Lake are splitting 50-50 the projected cost of approximately $62,500 – about 50 per cent more than the cost of the 2010 election – for the ImageCast hardware rental, software licence and service agreement for both this month’s election and the October 2018 municipal and school board elections.
The cost for the last manually hand-tabulated municipal 2010 general election, also split between the city and school district on a 50-50 basis, was just under $42,000, but it took more than fours hours after the polls closed – until after midnight to determine some of the winners. The number of poll clerks hired for the 2014 election is expected to be around 25 compared to 60 in 2010.
The turnout for that election in 2010 was 41.1 per cent of the names on the eligible voters’ list showing up to vote. That figure equated to 3,638 Thompsonites – 3,536 with valid, accepted ballots, 26 voters who declined their ballots – which they can still do simply by writing “declined” on the back of the ballot and then inserting it into the vote-counting machine– and 76 spoiled ballots. Many voters did not vote for an entire slate of eight council candidates, with the average ballot featuring only 5.8 votes for members of council.
There were 433 votes cast in advance polls in 2010 compared to 250 in 2006.
On election day Oct. 22 there will polling stations set up from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the gymnasiums of Juniper Elementary School; Ecole Riverside Elementary School; Wapanohk Community School; Deerwood Elementary School; Burntwood Elementary School; and Westwood Elementary School. Additional polling stations have now been established also for Rotary Place (10.am. to 12 noon); Thompson General Hospital (1 p.m. to 3 p.m.) and Northern Spirit Manor (3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.)
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