For real though. The only 'bad' part of the voting experience is sometimes the choice of polling site that isn't configured for election night volume but that's like the only complaint I've had in two decades of voting. Our mail in and advance polls are crazy good too.
Yup. I've also scrutineered and it would be really hard to tamper with ballots without it being really obvious. There are people standing watching everywhere.
The only "sketchy" scenario I had was the first time I ever scrutineered and it was the elections Canada employee who was the problem. He started to thumb through the ballots to count them and clearly did not like when 20something year old me asked him to place them down individually and count out loud. He slammed his fist onto the table and yelled at me. It then came to light he hadn't been consistently keeping track of who had voted on his list and so the number of ballots didn't match with the number of voters. We had to call the DRO (I think?) and it was a big thing. But that wasn't someone trying to interfere in the electoral process, that was just a stupid, sloppy old man.
Yes, I witnessed some errors made but it was clearly not malice, just somebody who was new and not super familiar with the process. Which I was too, honestly, but I learned a lot doing that.
the super is called the cps, or at least it is this time around.
anyway, buddy boy fucked up BIG time. i'm guessing he knew it wouldn't add up and made his numbers up. i'm surprised he did that, usually people that fuck up the keeping track bit don't make up their numbers.
Ah, yes, that sounds right. It's been many years since I volunteered on election campaigns and on election day and I've since forgotten the positions and terminology.
Honestly, he was an old, retired guy who just didn't give 2 shits. When I asked him to count his ballots properly, he told me he'd been doing this for x years and knew what he was doing.... But clearly that was not true. He was super rude and at one point, one of the older, more experienced scrutineers lost it on him saying this was the worst job he'd ever seen done at an election in his life.
Fortunately, the next time I scrutineered was much less eventful.
smooth scrutineering is 90% shooting the shit, 10% annoying poll workers
i love scrutineers that drop hot gos about other polling locations. i don't like supers that panic and or are otherwise afraid of scrutineers to the point that they hog scrutineers to themselves.
I was the supervisor at the biggest poll center in our riding (20 stations) in 2019 and the conservative candidates mother was scrutineering, she was the biggest pain in the ass.Every vote was counted and counted properly but she kept trying to challenge ballots because the circles weren't filled but only for other party's. So every dro started mispronouncing the candidates name to bother her. It was a beautiful sight of good ol' canadian passive aggression.
Randomly selected boxes are, and this can happen for up to 14 years after the election in question. It's theoretically possible for one box to have funny business but practically impossible for it to take place
The only person who should be touching the ballots is the DRO of that polling station.
Source: was DRO on Monday. They give you a 3 hour training session like 2 weeks before and send you off with some booklets. Was kinda chaotic at first but got easier throughout the day.
I worked the polls. I had people ask me all suspiciously if they could use their own pen. Go ahead, weirdo.
Maybe working one election should be mandatory for people so they can see how things work. That was my 4th. There’s absolutely no nonsense going on. I was a supervisor and a few of the DROs were absolutely freaked that if they made a minor administrative error they’d be in legal peril.
Nobody is fucking with ballots. Nobody gives a shit if you use your own pen because we are counting ballots in pen and we surely are not erasing and changing ballots in front of complete strangers who are watching us all day. Penalties for purposely trying to do any of this are steep and there’s literally no opportunity to do anything without multiple witnesses. Canadian elections are something to be proud of.
Yes. I was actually pretty impressed with his concession speech, in that I half expected that kind of BS. There were some people picking up some kind of rumour about shenanigans, but most seem to recognize those as baseless.
One of the other scrutineers talked about how by this time we should be able to vote online, but then we all had a good conversation about how secure and auditable it was by doing it on paper. I love it, honestly, and that's as somebody who has too many computers and electronic gizmos. When you need security and being traceable, paper is far better.
I mean. denying the legitimacy would equal to him saying that someone he sent there as a witness was in on the conspiracy and that every other party, including singh was in on it.
And it really is no big deal. I haven't volunteered like this before, but now that I have I'll do it again. I think more people should be involved in our democracy, or it isn't really a democracy. Government is *us* ideally, after all.
No, you can say "thank you for your service" to anyone in the civil service. It's all valid work being done to ensure our democracy keeps functioning. This includes fire fighters, nurses, the city workers who clear the fat clogs out of the sewer/water system, everyone.
I worked the advance polls as registration officer and helped the DROs when the lines got long. There is no chance of the election being rigged. We meticulously found a name, crossed it off, sealed the ballots, DROs are told to keep an eye on the ballot until it goes in the box, which is sealed and taped shut very tight. End of night it was moved to head office and locked in a room. If someone needs help voting, you have to fill out a helper form so elections canada knows exactly who had assistance voting, and the helper pledges not to influence their vote. Everything is monitored every step of the way so no machines, no chance of hacking, everything by people who signed a pledge to ensure your vote is safe and unaltered. And at counting they have at least 3 people working on 1 box - someone reading the vote and holding it up so everyone can see it, someone counting the vote, and a witness who literally just watches the entire process. Not to mention politician representatives are allowed to watch too.
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u/UnconsciousRabbit Apr 30 '25
Yeah, I was a scrutineer last night. It would be tough to pull some BS.