Electors participating in the 2008 Municipal and Education Elections will see changes at the polling locations when they go to vote. Significant improvements have been made to streamline the process and allow electors the time they need to decide for which of the various mayors, councillors and district education councillors they wish to vote.

In order to provide training for poll officials, a video was prepared for use in the classroom.

A portion of this video has been posted online. It presents a an overview of the election process in New Brunswick, the various polling officials that electors will encounter, and how voting will occur at the polls.

Choose to watch this streaming video in either English or American Sign Language (ASL) below:

Municipal and Education Elections Video (English)

Municipal and Education Elections Video (ASL)

Quadrennial elections are very complex and we needed to consider ways to modernize and streamline the process. Manual counting of ballots takes a long time, in some cases over 5 hours. After working a long day, having polling officials count ballots by hand often results in errors.

Along with changes to the processes used at the polling locations, these machines will reduce line-ups, speed up the voting process, and improve the speed and accuracy of the counting and reporting process.

Changes to the processes used at the polls allow simplified training of polling officials where job functions are clearly defined. In addition, these changes make it easier to provide service to voters in their language of choice.

Elections NB is confident in the security and reliability of the voting system being used in New Brunswick.

Voters still mark individual paper ballots that are available for a hand recount if necessary, which was one of the conditions Elections NB set for the system chosen. The only thing the machines do is count the ballots, using an optical scanning system, and record the results, but if there were any doubts about the accuracy of that count the ballots would be available for a hand recount. Manual recounts have been done in a couple of jurisdictions using the same system, and the results came out exactly the same as with the machine count.

It is conceivable that the memory cards used to program the vote tabulators and record the results could be mis-programmed, either deliberately or by mistake, though any honest mistakes would normally be caught by the accuracy testing that occurs prior to the tabulation machines being sent from Fredericton. Deliberate, fraudulent, mis-programming would have to involve an employee of the company that does the programming engaging in deliberate sabotage of the company’s work, or a conspiracy of company employees and candidates or election officials to rig the results. Because of the multiple witnessed steps with accuracy testing that is performed, it is highly unlikely that this will occur.

Polling Officials do not have access to technology that can reprogram the memory cards or tamper with the machines, and physical access to them is limited to polling day only. It is conceivable that additional ballots could be filled out and tabulated by a malicious Polling Official, but this could occur at any type of election. Because Polling Officials are always witnessed when working with ballots, the tabulation machine, or the ballot box, it is highly unlikely that this will occur.

Should the power be interrupted while voting is happening, the memory card's flash memory will save all votes cast to that point. The machine will not tabulate any more ballots however. In this case, the ballot box’s auxiliary slot will be opened, and electors will continue to place their ballot through this slot into a second independent compartment in the ballot box.

Once power is restored, the slot is sealed until the end of election day. When the polls close, the Poll Supervisor witnesses the tabulation machine officer open the auxiliary compartment, remove the ballots, and feed them through the tabulation machine. Once all the ballots are tabulated, the machine can be instructed to produce a results tape.

The tabulation machine sits on a cardboard ballot box. Ballots are inserted in the slot, are tabulated, and fall into the ballot box.

An audio vote solution is being piloted in each of the 14 Returning Offices and 9 Satellite Offices around New Brunswick. This system will benefit visually impaired voters, those who have difficulty reading and others who request to vote this way. This device reads the ballot and the candidate choices to the elector, who will be wearing headphones. The Elector makes their choices using a hand held controller. This device is also designed for the Sip ‘n’ puff user.

A Magnifying device will be available at each of the Returning Offices, Satellite Offices and polling stations.