Tabulators counting votes in Alberta advance polling

Elections Alberta is using machines known as tabulators to count paper ballots at advance polling locations for the first time.

"You still mark a paper ballot and then you enter it into the tabulator and it's recorded in the tabulator," Robyn Bell, spokesperson for Elections Alberta, said in an interview with CBC in mid-May.

"We do preserve the paper ballots for three months after the election at minimum, and that's in accordance with the Election Act."

Tabulators were used in Alberta byelections in 2014 and 2017. "Vote anywhere" ballots were counted by tabulators in the 2019 election after they were sent by courier to the main Elections Alberta office.

Tabulators will be in all 330 advance voting locations this week. The technology allows Elections Alberta to update the number of voters who cast ballots this week every 15 minutes on its website.

More than 160,000 votes were cast on the first day of advance polling on Tuesday, setting a new record.

Votes cast on May 29 will still be counted by hand.

The use of the machines has alarmed some groups who support UCP Leader Danielle Smith, implying that they could be used to commit voter fraud. The concerns echo false claims that were raised in the U.S. following the election of President Joe Biden in 2020.

However, Smith dismissed concerns about tabulators as recently as Thursday morning in an appearance on Corus Radio. She said she has confidence in the system because paper ballots are kept in case a recount is required.

Elections Alberta has created an information sheet about tabulators with answers to frequently asked questions, including safeguards used on the machines.

The fact sheet says the machines, supplied by U.S.-based company Election Systems and Software, are not connected to a network.

Each tabulator goes through logic and accuracy testing before and after voting where election officials run a stack of marked test ballots through the machine while candidates and scrutineers look on.

Elections Alberta is ensuring the machines are kept secure overnight at polling stations and in the two-day period between the end of advance voting and election day.

One software expert said Elections Alberta could take one extra step to ensure the accuracy of the count.

Aleksander Essex is an associate professor of software engineering at Western University in London, Ont., who specializes in the cyber-security of voting technology.

Essex said while logic and accuracy testing of tabulators is important, best practices include running a statistical audit of the actual results.

Risk-limiting audits check a sample of the actual paper ballots against the tabulator counts. Essex said elections officials in the U.S. use these audits more and more to counter false claims of election fraud.

"Many of these states do these audits pro forma," he said. "They do it because there's a recognition that it is an internationally accepted principle of democratic elections that the vote counting itself has transparency."

Bell, from Elections Alberta, said the agency will not be performing a post-election audit. They will rely on running test ballot stacks before and after the advance vote is concluded.

Essex said it's important to know that Albertans can be completely confident the election will be conducted fairly.

However, he said Canada needs to set up a federal agency that can set national standards for tabulators and other types of election technology, similar to what has been done in the U.S. and Europe.

As for people spreading false claims about election fraud, Essex has a message for them.

"Go be a poll worker, find out how the election is actually done and get a little bit of street credibility before you criticize how the election is conducted," he said.

"I think that would help a lot of people feel better about things if they just knew how it was done."

Provincial affairs reporter

Michelle Bellefontaine covers the Alberta legislature for CBC News in Edmonton. She has also worked as a reporter in the Maritimes and in northern Canada.