Elections NB ready for advance polls, election day

The province's chief electoral officer says staff is prepared for advance polls being held Sept. 15 and Sept. 17. 

"We are ready to welcome electors to the polls Saturday and on Monday," Kim Poffenroth said. 

While she didn't have the number of ballots cast to date, Poffenroth confirmed eligible voters have been able to vote at any returning office in the province since Aug. 23, the first day of the provincial election campaign. 

There's been no change in how a person votes, but Poffenroth said Elections NB has spent a lot of time enhancing and reviewing training processes in hopes that things would go more smoothly for the voter.

"Overall, they shouldn't see much of a difference at the polls." 

Different model

Voters will still be marking their vote on a paper ballot that will eventually be counted in a tabulation machine.

"It's a different model than what we used in 2014," said Poffenroth. "It's an enhanced model. The biggest change from 2014 is the software that's being used to transfer the results."

During the last provincial election, the a computer program used to enter the tabulators' results caused a delay in receiving results. It didn't properly replace the manual results that were initially called in from polling stations.

The results had steadily streamed in early in the evening from all points of the province, but then a technical glitch in the new voting system brought things to a near-halt.

Elections NB stopped releasing the results until the glitch was fixed, which took an hour. 

All 700 tabulation machines were tested before being sent out for use at the advance polls and on election day. 

Poffenroth said once the polls close on election night, Sept. 24, the results are transferred by modem to Elections New Brunswick. 

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"The big difference from 2014, instead of the results going across the government of New Brunswick firewall, that won't happen this year and we're using a new piece of software to transfer those results," she said. 

"Once they arrive in Fredericton, there is a number of verification processes the data is going to go through to ensure there is no corruption in the date before we post it to our website." 

Accuracy not speed

Poffenroth said the emphasis is on accuracy of the results, not the speed. She added it's not known how long it will take before election results are posted.  

"I believe there's three verifications that the data is even going to go through before we even post it to our website. The emphasis is really on accuracy." 

The polls close at 8 p.m. on Sept. 24 but Poffenroth said anyone in line will be able to vote. Advance polls and the regular poll is open from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. 

There will be 5,000 people working at returning offices and polling locations on election day.

"It's a huge operation." 

Poffenroth said people with their voter cards will be processed much more quickly at the polls. 

"If you're not on the voter's list then you do need to bring ID that shows three things: your name, your signature and your civic address and then you can be added to the voter's list." 

Poffenroth said the ideal piece of identification is a driver's licence but if a person doesn't have one, then they can use a utility bill and their medicare card. 

There are between 560,000 and 570,000 eligible voters in the province.