OTTAWA -- After the Conservative leadership campaign results were significantly delayed this weekend due to thousands of ballots being damaged upon opening, the party is offering new details about what caused the more-than-six-hour hold-up in tabulating the mail-in-only results.
In short, it was a combination of factors: smaller envelopes than the party has used in the past, the record number of mail-in ballots, and the inability to add extra hands to speed things up due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The big reveal was supposed to start at 6 p.m. ET on Sunday, but just before the event was set to begin a 90-minute delay was announced. Ultimately it was 12:20 a.m. Monday before the announcement of the results got underway.
Essentially what happened was the automated envelope opening machines that the party was using --and had used in past leadership votes to save time -- were not only slicing open the envelope, but also catching some of the ballots and cutting through or otherwise damaging them enough to require a fresh ballot to be re-marked with the identical data in order for it to be scanned and tabulated.
The way the voting tabulation machines work, if the ballot is damaged in any way it can’t be processed. The secondary process of re-marking of fresh ballots is what the party says caused the hold-up, because with each one scrutineers had to closely watch over the marking of a new ballot to maintain election integrity.
The party believes that the slicing through of not only the envelope, but the ballot within it, happened because of the size of the envelope used. Inside each standard white envelope was a smaller “secrecy” envelope that contained the ballot.
With four candidates instead of 13 names on the ballot like there were in 2017, the ballots were smaller and so too were the envelopes. The smaller envelopes were also picked to help get ballots out to Canadians and back in to the party as fast as possible given the ongoing COVID-19 mail delays many have experienced.
“To be clear, there was no issue with the ballot machines, only the automated envelope openers,” Conservative Party of Canada Director of Communications Cory Hann told CTV News in a statement, adding that Dominion Voting, the company contracted to calculate the results, was not at fault.
“All ballots were able to be counted and processed in the end, and while we regret we weren’t able to get the results out as timely as we wanted, we’re pleased the process itself was completely fair, and overseen every step of the way by scrutineers from every campaign, and representatives of Deloitte,” Hann said.
While the party had been collecting and verifying ballots as they arrived at party headquarters in downtown Ottawa for weeks leading up to the Aug. 21 deadline, officials didn’t begin opening up and tallying the ballots inside until the early morning hours on Aug. 23.
“The reason being is that once you're in that room those scrutineers, they have their phones taken away from them, they have all communication taken away, they are not allowed to leave that room, so you can't hold a person for 48 hours in a room in order to open up the ballots,” said Conservative Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) co-chair Lisa Raitt in an interview on CTV News Channel on Sunday night.
TOTAL SLICED BALLOTS UNKNOWN
In the leadership race, which saw Erin O’Toole declared the winner on the third ballot, a total of 174,849 ballots were cast.
Party officials have yet to offer a precise figure on just how many ballots were damaged, but Hann said the preliminary determination is that the slowdown occurred after the party was 97 per cent through the ballots, with the delay being on getting through the remaining 5,000 or so ballots.
Once officials realized the scope of the issue, there was little that could be done to troubleshoot.
“In normal circumstances, we would just add more people to the process to speed things up when necessary. With the restrictions around COVID-19 and needing to keep volunteers and staff safe while adhering to all public health orders, adding more people just wasn’t an option. We had a finite amount of people we could involve, and they did their absolute best under the circumstances,” said Hann.
Now, the party plans to “take stock” of the event in general, and this will include examining the envelope issue.
“We'll look at what went well and what can be improved, and that information will be shared with our team,” Hann said.
A COVID-19 ELECTION CONCERN?
The extensive delay prompted some questioning as to whether or not other major elections could be thrown off course due to similar technical issues if mail-in ballots need to be widely used, particularly with the looming uncertainty around a snap fall federal election.
According to Elections Canada, while it counts its federal election mail-in ballots by hand, machines are used to open envelopes at their main office in Ottawa.
The machines are from an Ontario company called Insource, with some additional components from an American firm. The agency has not experienced problems with that system in the past,” said the election agency’s media team in a statement.
Elections Canada is still working on its full pandemic election plan, including increasing capacity to process mail-in votes, and says that depending on the volume of mail-in ballots received, it’s possible there would also be delays in announcing results.
