Up in Ontario

My Experience Working for Elections Canada

Yesterday, from 6 am to 9 pm, I worked as a poll clerk in the service of Elections Canada. I had nothing but a sense of curiosity and the availability of time to blame for my choice. I'm sure that looking back on the experience, I will remember it with much more fondness than I can muster from this still-close vantage point.

Those working for Elections Canada on the day of an election call the day E-Day. The first time I heard this I should have had an inkling of the campaign to come. No, I don't want to be too negative about the whole thing. A ton of great, dedicated people worked their asses off to make the pretty numbers show up on the TV screens, and they deserve a ton of credit. Democracy heaved to life for a few weeks in Canada and culminated in one day and we're lucky to have it.

My top-10 list from E-Day:

• 1 - The voting process seems unduly picky and slow, and this is just from the perspective of the voter casting one vote. Imagine being on the other side of that table, crossing out names or ripping ballots all day.

• 2 - Meeting and chatting with the talented and clever Sarah Marchildon, of the famous Hollywood North Report, a renowned triathlete and pending star of the writerly world.

• 3 - Keith.

• 4 - One of the folks in charge of our polling station saying to me in response to a question she couldn't answer early in the morning when I was keen: 'It's like the blind leading the blind."

• 5 - Some lessons seem to be due to voters, educating them and making them a part of the voting process. As it stands today (well, yesterday) most voters walk in and stand in some line to be told what to do. The signage in the polling station is weak, and there is no explanation provided to voters when they enter of how they should proceed. It would be simple to figure out the major paths for voters - i.e.: if they have their voter registration card or not, if they are registered or not - and sort this 80 percent of the voters into streamlined paths, then deal with the exceptions.

• 6 - The feeling that in packing up our polling booth we were participating in the bureaucracy of creating evidence for legal review. Everything we had used had to be sealed in an envelope, label in a certain way, signed by anyone within hearing distance and packaged into our ballot box, which was then sealed. I wonder where those ballot boxes go? I picture the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark where the ark is wheeled into that huge warehouse, past row upon row of uniform boxes, to its latest final resting place. There must be a huge amount of warehouse space somewhere simply dedicated to the defensive posture of storing election records for a prescribed amount of time before they're destroyed.

• 7 - The fugue of repetition kills my spirit. Then, at the end of the night when you have to be your sharpest, you're done. It's been thirteen hours since a breath of fresh air and the count begins.

• 8 - People believe in and trust people, then process. If folks are trustworthy they'll get to vote. We hardly ever had to use our process manuals to figure out what to do. People came in, waited patiently, and were pleasant. Peace, Order and Good Government indeed.

• 9 - The size and scale of the sheer, blunt, mechanics behind vote counting. Like Soylent Green, elections are made of people. Those happy, shiny graphics on the TV are driven by a murmuring mass of humanity behind the scenes doing the count and the recount and the double count and the balance count to make sure and double-triple-certain sure they're right. It's kind of reassuring, in an organic, tangible way, that each vote cast last night was held many times in hands that cared about the outcome.

• 10 - Svend Robinson's a handsome man with a terrible handshake. Neither of these things are captured on TV. He swung by our polling station to press the flesh yesterday and both of these things became evident to me.

And some final thoughts on...

• The (ahem) elegance of Harper's victory speech. Despite being really doughy and unlikeable - in fact, untrustable and manipulative to reach power, to my instincts - Harper delivered a great victory speech. So congratulations to his speech writer(s) and handlers, they made him what he could not be on his own - palatable. Somewhat like an expired pork roast in a tailored suit. We'll see how long helmet-head lasts before one of his silenced backbenchers puts their foot in their yee-haw.

• What is the over / under on when the next election will happen? My guess: 20 months. Et tu?

• What are the odds on who will be the next Liberal leader? The early frontrunners on the rumourmill seem to be Belinda Stronach, Michael Ignatieff, Frank McKenna and John Manley. How about these odds:
  
  • Stronach - 10 : 1
    
  • Ignatieff - 16 : 1
    
  • McKenna - 4 : 1
    
  • Manley - 3 : 1