Audit shows Oct. election challenges
By Lethbridge Herald on July 16, 2025.
Herald photo by Al Beeber
City clerk and returning officer Bonnie Hilford talks to media about an audit report prepared for administration on procedures for the upcoming municipal election on Oct. 20.Al Beeber
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
An audit of municipal election processes shows numerous challenges that the City of Lethbridge is facing before and during the Oct. 20 vote.
An audit report to city council Tuesday by City Clerk and returning officer Bonnie Hilford and deputy City Clerk David Sarsfield illustrated those challenges for the City during the voting period which runs from Oct. 8-20. Voting closes at 8 p.m. on Oct. 20.
The audit report was submitted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and was accepted by council as information.
The City conducted a comprehensive review of its proposed election processes for the October vote to assess alignment with the Local Authorities Election Act which was amended by the provincial government and Election Bylaw 6473.
The review “focused on identifying compliance gaps, vulnerabilities around safeguarding of voter data, fraud prevention, completeness, impartiality, inefficiencies, and transparency, with actionable recommendations aligned with other similar election and best practices, using a pragmatic approach,” says an executive summary of the audit.
Hilford told council that administration has researched many different methods and tested various ones for counting ballots and has found one that is “quick and accurate and it’s reduced the time per ballot” so the hope is counting will be done by the afternoon of Wednesday, Oct. 22.
A recommendation was made by the auditor to count otes for mayor first because it’s a different counting method in which voters are only choosing one candidate unlike for councillors or schools where people can pick many. Those results are expected Monday night after about two hours of counting by the 20 teams of four that will be utilized.
“That is a quicker counting method; we could get that done that evening we feel,” Hilford said.
Hilford told a media scrum legislative changes were significant and the City didn’t know how to proceed with it so we thought it might be prudent to have an auditing firm come in and help us out with the processes” to ensure the City has sound processes it can rely on and make sure an election is delivered that won’t be contested. And Hilford is certain it will be a successful election.
About 100,000 ballots will be counted during the vote.
With the election 97 days away, Hilford said “there’s a lot to do but we have done a lot, we’ve prepared a lot,” plans are in place and the City is excited about the election.
A hand-counting exercise conducted by administration just for council members last year originally showed that it took 28 minutes to count 50 ballots. One team took 168 minutes to count 250 ballots, an average of 40.3 seconds per ballot. Total time to count councillor ballots at 41.6 seconds each wss estimated at 370 hours. With 20 teams of four people counting at the same time, it was originally thought it would take estimated 18.5 hours to complete counting those ballots.
14-13
This is sad sad sad … we had a great and accurate system . It’s proven itself in many past elections. I’ve volunteered for many elections ,
I’ve seen it first hand.
Now, because, a nutty government that has been influenced by a conspiracy theory that came out of Trumps election loss, we will spend more money and way more volunteer hours to get a less efficient and less accurate election process .