Our elections in Canada aren't perfect: there isn't enough security around the voter identification process, the mail-in ballots so sought after by the Shiny Pony add additional insecurity, and there's a longstanding problem with Liberals using intimidation to make new immigrants think they have to vote "L" or face deportation. And of course the less said about the new "leaders debate commission" the better.
But over at Steyn's side Tal Bachman points out how Canada's method of running paper ballot elections works far better and would vastly improve the speed and security of America's election day.
I was actually thinking a couple weeks ago when Steyn guest-hosted for Rush Limbaugh of calling in talking about much of this same stuff, as well as a little anecdote about the 1997 election:
I was one of the Reform Party scrutineers in Edmonton West. It was a popular riding: along with the Liberal, Reform, Conservative, and NDP candidates, there was also a Marxist-Leninist, Green, and a Natural Law Party candidate. As Tal mentioned in the article, at 8pm the polling station closes down and nobody is allowed in or out until the votes are counted. Every party is allowed a scrutineer: we can rotate throughout the day, but the scrutineer who is supposed to be there for the count has to be there at 7pm. From later in the afternoon the Liberals scrutineer had left (probably had to pick kids up at a babysitter or whatever) and hadn't been replaced.
Around 7:20pm things started getting hectic: the division polling officer had left a voicemail to Anne McLellan's team (this was all before cellphones remember) but no replacement scrutineer had shown up. A flurry of calls were being performed: the riding returning officer had been forced to notify the federal Liberal campaign team of the incident as well as the higher ups at Election's Canada (who by this point, remember, were already into ballot counts in other parts of the country). There was a mad scramble to find a replacement scrutineer and get them to the polling station. By this point those of us in the major parties (Reform, NDP, Conservative) were assured that our own campaigns were already notified of the discrepancy. Finally it was revealed they had managed to get a scruntineer who could make it, but likely would be after 8pm when the polling station was supposed to be sealed.
Word came down that Elections Canada would agree to let him into the otherwise closed polling station at or before 8:15pm on the dot but if he was any later than that he would be refused entry and the count would be done without them. Even this ended up being a controversy of sorts, or at the very least a major outlier. The polling station results were flagged, and since McLellan won by only 12 votes in 1993 it was a concern: because their scrutineer caused a late start at the polling station (he arrived about 5 minutes after 8pm), there was going to be some special treatment (I can't recall what) in the event of a recount that the Liberals were not going to be happy with. In the end the incident ended up being flagged and reviewed by Elections Canada and all parties in the riding were notified of the incident right up at the federal level.
So yes, Canada's elections (at least the 1997 paper ballot method) is extremely secure. No Philadelphia shenanigans happening here!
