Not Time To Give Up Yet

I was really disappointed last week.

At the regular Government Services committee meeting we received a response from the Minister of Municipal Affairs to our request asking him allow Grande Prairie to utilize internet voting in the 2010 municipal election. His response in the official letter to the City was very similar to the email he sent me:

"Dear Mr. Given:

Thank you for your recent e-mail confirming that the City of Grande Prairie is offering to be a pilot site for internet voting for the 2010 general municipal elections conducted under the Local Authorities Election Act (LAEA).

To confirm our discussions and followup letter to your mayor, at this point in time, internet voting is not permitted under the LAEA, but there is an ability to pass a regulation allowing an elected authority to prescribe a system for the conduct and procedure of an election or vote not provided for in the LAEA. If the city was interested in pursuing alternative voting, a business case would have to be presented to request internet voting. The business case would need to address the pertinent issues, such as the need for internet voting in the city, who is the licensed provider, how is security guaranteed, how is voter validation dealt with, what are the costs, how are results verified and recounts conducted.

I understand you have provided a contact with a company that may be supplying internet voting services to the city. For the ministry to review your request, the city needs to present a written business case addressing the potential security, privacy, validation and process issues that may arise as a consequence of implementing internet voting methods.

Once we have received the information from the city on the process issues noted above and anticipated costs, we will further review your request.

Sincerely,
Ray Danyluk"

The Minister's response isn't what I was disappointed in, after all he's basically asking for more info which is reasonable. This idea is gaining steam, Grande Prairie had resolution adopted by the AUMA in 2007 and now it looks like Edmonton is catching on to the idea (from this article you'd think it was their idea). This will be reality eventually and the Minister wants to cover all the bases, that's fair.

Anyways, what disappointed me was what happened when I tried to move the process along.

The short version of the story is: I made a motion asking administration to come up with a plan on how we could put together a business case, including what it would cost to do so. The Mayor spoke against my motion saying that it would be an example of provincial downloading. The vote was called on my motion, Mayor Logan & Alderman Minhas voted against it while Alderman Rice and myself voted for it - and on a 50/50 tie, the motion was defeated.

So the request to check in to what it might cost to build a business plan to submit to the Minister died right there. Right after the meeting I was very disappointed and confused. I couldn't understand why the two other committee members would vote against an idea that:

A) didn't cost us anything
B) could have helped us build a case that would encourage the province to pick up part of the costs of an internet vote

So anyways, my mood right then is probably what caused me to sound so fatalistic in the newspaper interview.

But, upon reflection... I've decided not to give up.

FCM 2008, Day One - Trade Show Floor

One of the parts of the FCM conference that can be either; 'Really Good' or 'Really Bad' is the Municipal Expo trade show. I should say that it's always "neat" but it seems like some years you walk around seeing the same (big) consulting firms, government agencies and providers of fine street lights and playground equipment.

Other times you'll see something on the floor that really tweaks your interest and has obvious uses back home that are immediately apparent. This year there were at least three that fell in to that later category.

Here's some various pics from the trade show floor. Some show the variety of displays and products while a couple are the ones I found really useful that I hope I can bring back to apply to our city.....


The entrance to the Municipal Expo


This gigantic mower is probably of more interest to rural municipalities who have to maintain a lot of ditches.


Here's a company that is at every conference; Waste Management...



... and right across the isle from WM is a company that manufactures bins. What a coincidence!



I thought this was really cool. This is the booth for mtsAllstream and you might recognize the image on the screen. They are using Grande Prairie's very own Muniportal.ca site as a promotional tool. They were only promoting three different "case studies", each in different areas of their business so obviously if Muniportal is good enough to put in the booth we must have something cutting edge.


In a previous post I mentioned Edmonton's Co2RE team, here's their booth.


This was really cool... LED street lights. You probably know that LED lights last a lot longer and consume less energy than traditional lights. That's a big deal when you taxes go to pay for the electricity bill those lights generate. GP has already converted most of the traffic lights (Red, Yellow & Green) around the city to LED. The next thing is these LED streetlights that Curtis Cartmill with LED Roadway Lighting is showing off. I want to see us move our system to these kind of lights to save some money.


Here's some guys selling decorative hardware for the plain old street lights.


I thought this was a really in interesting booth... the Nuclear Waste Management Organization. I kept my distance.

This was a sight that warmed my heart ... our City Clerk, Janette Furgeson talking with the folks from Intelivote Systems. If you've read this blog you know I'm a big proponent of moving towards internet voting as other cites have done. Well Janette is in charge of all the municipal elections for the city so she needs to know this stuff. I'm going to do more of a post on this topic and some of the stuff I learned at the booth later.

These next two are of something that immediately piqued my interest and made me think of at least one area where we need to use the product. This company (MCM Structures) sells a product that looks like a decorative bottom to a streetlights, only it's not.


It's called the MCM Base and when you open it up it is actually a junction box that can hold phone, cable and electricity connections for up to six homes.


This is another view of the open junction box that the streetlight actually sits on top of but they make actually make another product that is for retrofits to existing street lights. It's called, not surprisingly, the "Retrofit". When I get home I'll take a picture of a spot in our city where these need to be used.

AUMA Convention - GP Pushes Internet Voting Forward

We've had good success with our resolutions at the AUMA convention this year. Below I mentioned our 911 funding resolution that was passed yesterday.



This afternoon I had the pleasure of standing up to introduce our resolution on internet voting. The resolution read;



"Now therefore be it resolved that the AUMA encourage the Provincial Government to amend the Local Authorities Election Act to enable alternative means of voting for future Municipal General Elections, including internet or web-based voting, while preserving the integrity of the voting process and protection for voters of the secrecy to cast ballots."



I spoke to the experience of Markham, which I mentioned here before. The vote was called and the motion passed - but with a surprisingly narrow margin! I think it was something like 118 for and 76 against. Regardless of the margin it is now the policy of the organization and they will begin working on the province to get this moving. Hopefully you'll have the ability to vote online soon... The next city election is in 2010, stay tuned.

Online Voting

I bank online. I shop online. I read the newspaper online. I vote online... that is, I would if I lived in Markham.

I've been excited about the possibility of online voting over the internet since I saw it at an FCM trade show a few years ago. I've brought the idea forwardto committee to see what we could do to make this available here in Grande Prairie. Unfortunately the Province of Alberta act that governs municipalities (the Municipal Government Act or MGA) doesn't allow online voting yet. There was a review of the act which recommended adding that ability but not until after the 2007 municipal elections.

Markham, Ontario had internet voting in their 2006 municipal election. The city even set up a special website that helped residents understand internet voting and explained the "how-to's". After people voted they were asked to complete a short survey about the experience, some of the key findings from the post vote survey:

"- 91 per cent of those who voted online said they would be "very likely" to vote online in the future.

- One in five (21 per cent) Markham online voters said they did not vote at all in the 2003 municipal election.

- 88 per cent of online voters in 2006 cite "convenience" as their primary reason for voting online

- Markham saw online voting jump 48 per cent from 7,210 in 2003 to 10,639 online ballots cast in 2006.

- This contributed to an overall 2006 voter turnout of 37.6 per cent, well above the typical turnout of 28 per cent for a municipal election.".

So until Alberta catches up, residents here can only read media releases like this one and wonder if it would improve voter turn out in our local elections.