Last October's municipal vote marred by multiple factors, Calgary's auditor finds

It was an election that frustrated voters, candidates and poll workers alike.

The city's election returning officer, Laura Kennedy, calledit a perfect storm everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

City auditor Kathy Palmer laid out the problems in a report to city council's audit committee Wednesday morning.

The biggest problems included:

• An insufficient supply of ballots.
• Flawed process for selecting sites for voting stations.
• Insufficient staffing for the election.
• Problems in reporting the results of the election.

In total, the audit found the insufficient supply of ballots resulted in 57 per cent of polling stations requiring more ballots from the city's northeast election office.

However, many of those calls came during the evening rush hour, resulting in long delays in the extra ballots arriving.

Some stations had to wait up to six hours for additional ballots to arrive.

Big problems at big polling stations

There were superstations in Auburn Bay and Evanston, each of which was the polling location for potentially 10,000 voters.

The large polls saw long linesas there weren't enough election workers or parking.

Thevoter turnout at those locations ran at least 10 per cent lower than other polls in those wards.

Some polling stations weren't accessible.

The city's web server for reporting election results also crashed, but the audit found that alone wasn't a key problem in getting the numbers out to the public.

The audit concluded once the computer issues were resolved at around 10:45 p.m. on election night, less than 20 per cent of the results were available to be posted.

Kennedy said she's not sure why so many things went wrong in a single event but she's making plans to ensure they aren't repeated.

"Systems failed," said Kennedy.

"And our mitigation on those system was not successful."

Reforms for elections coming

She has already arranged for city council to change election rules so that vote tabulator machines can be used in a future election to count paper ballots and for voting hours to be extended, allowing for an 8 a.m. start time.

But Kennedy is making other reforms.

She's arranged with Elections Alberta to allow Calgary to use its permanent voters list.

For future elections, the city will also have decentralized locations for extra ballots so any calls for additional ballots can be responded to in a shorter timeframe.

Kennedy is planning to bring a full list of reforms to city council in September.

Councillor says Calgarians expect better

Coun. Evan Woolley, who chairs the audit committee, said Calgarians expect better and he's confident the next city vote will run smoother.

"I think we saw a function of process and procedure breakdowns and frankly, human error," said Woolley.

While the audit identified what went wrong, it's short on details on why those mistakes happened or who would be held accountable.

"I have no interest in looking at rolling heads on this," said Woolley.

When asked why it would take six hours for additional ballots to reach a polling station after calling for them, Kennedy said she wasn't sure.

"I know when we received requests, we processed them immediately so I'm not sure what that six hours is based on."

Coun. George Chahal said there were long linesat poll locations in his northeast ward. But often it was language barriers that were a problem.

He estimates English or French is not the first language of 65 per cent of eligible voters in his ward so that can slow the voting process.

"If we have diversity amongst our election workers and who are available to assist residents in the voting process, I think that would be extremely helpful," said Chahal.

The first test of the city's election changes could come as soon as this fall.

The city is planning to hold a plebiscite before the end of the year on whether Calgary should officially bid for the 2026 winter Olympics.

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