It is a municipal election year in Saskatchewan, and council in North Battleford turned their minds towards how the municipal and school board election will be conducted.
Council passed a resolution outlining some of the rules and requirements that will be in place for that vote, rules set out in the provincial Cities Act and Local Government Elections Act that must be authorized by council well before Election Day on Oct. 26.
Many of the recommendations proposed by administration, and approved by council, were familiar ones that have been in place in prior votes. Two big changes are coming, however.
One change is the introduction of a mail-in ballot. The idea is to make that option available for people who need to be out of the city when the polls are open.
It has been used in Saskatoon, Regina, Prince Albert, Melfort and Moose Jaw in the 2012 vote, and according to administration the feedback was positive.
A bylaw will come back to council to set out the procedures, including how to conduct voter registration, voter ID, voter privacy, making sure the proper person receives a ballot and is the one actually voting, handling mail-in ballots and dealing with late ballots.
Another change is for disclosure of campaign contributions and expenses. This would, according to the memo to council from city clerk Debbie Wohlberg, establish disclosure requirements respecting campaign contributions and expenses and/or election campaign spending limits.
City Manager Jim Puffalt explained to reporters later that the need for transparency was one of the recommendations that came out of the report into the goings-on in the RM of Sherwood, where Reeve Kevin Eberle was removed from office over allegations of conflict of interest.
"Part of the issue with the RM of Sherwood, and part of the recommendation that came out of the report is that transparency in the election campaign is very important," said Puffalt.
Puffalt said he supports the new disclosure changes.
"It's important, it protects the voters, again, from any type of special interest groups trying to take control of an election and put a campaign together."
Again, a bylaw will need to be prepared and come back to council for approval, at which time more details on the requirements will become known. Administration has indicated similar bylaws are in place in Regina, Saskatoon, Moose Jaw and Estevan.
One other change will not be going ahead. There is provision in provincial legislation to allow cities and towns in Saskatchewan to institute criminal record checks for candidates.
But council’s resolution went along with administration’s recommendation that record checks not be put in place for this election.
The main issue is the length of time it would take for the documentation to come back and fingerprints to be processed, and the risk they wouldn’t be done in time for the vote.
“Some of them can take an extended time period,” Puffalt told council — up to four months, he said. But the election campaign is only a month long.
Wohlberg pointed out none of the other cities had criminal record checks in place for municipal elections. The proposal had come up before at North Battleford council in 2012, but did not go ahead at that time for similar reasons.
Other procedures approved for the 2016 vote will be much the same as those in place before. They include having the city clerk act as returning officer in the election, and having candidates names printed in alphabetical order on the ballot.
It was also recommended not to proceed with enumeration or a voter's list, as the City intends to continue the practice of simply having voters register when they cast their vote.
