Big Democracy Day
Working the BC Election, en famille
October 19, 2024, 5 am The eggs crack before dawn does. Omelettes all around. Because protein. Protein is the foundation of democracy.
It’s election day in British Columbia.
Every election – local, provincial or national – requires citizen participation, and lots of it. There’s a variety of jobs to be filled at every polling station in every riding. It’s the ultimate pop-up mass hire. A call goes out in advance for applications. You needn’t have experience: a short advance training session gets newbies up to speed.
It was Jen’s idea that we all apply. Why not? To feel the cut-and-thrust of the electoral process from the inside. To do the people’s business en famille. What could be a more meaningful? We’d bond, fulfill our civic duty and make a few bucks for the family cookie jar all at the same time.
All three of us got hired – but for three different jobs. Which meant we all went to different training sessions.
If you stretched your imagination, there in that classroom-style bunker at the Elections BC headquarters in North Vancouver, you could convince yourself you were in a Top-Gun-style mission briefing. First order of business was learning the lingo. “Elections BC loves its abbreviations,” said Dee, our trainer. We BIOs (That’s Ballot Issuing Officer) would be issued EVBs (Electronic Voting Books – aka, laptops.) If you’re having a problem with your EVB, signal your VEO (Voting Equipment Officer). Anything else, flag down your SVO (your supervisor). Bigger issues go up the chain to the DEO (District Electoral Officer) or the DDEO (Deputy District Electoral Officer). If you’re ever in trouble, just consult your QRG (Quick Reference Guide). That’s the playbook. (It’s pronounced “Kwerg.”) This became our mantra: Trust the Kwerg.
Jen’s a TO (Tabulating Officer); she supervises the voting machine. Lila’s an IO (Information Officer). They’re the first person people see – the greeter, genially checking folks’ ID and sending them into the maw of the machine. “They put you on the till and me on the grill,” I said. “They must have got tipped off about our personalities.”
The BIOs are the processors. We check voters’ ID, find them on the computer, issue them a ballot and send them across the room to mark their X in private. If they aren’t in the system, we get them into the system – provided they’re eligible to vote. (Canadian citizen? Eighteen or over? Lived in BC at least six months? Check, check and check.) We are gatekeepers of democracy! In a sense, it’s a sales job. What you’re selling is confidence. Confidence in the system. Confidence that this is all being done rigorously and right. People need to have trust. Trust is the foundation of democracy. Trust and protein.
7 am At my polling station, in a church basement in Upper North Van, set-up has already begun. Signage is up, the tabulating machines unpacked and positioned up front. Tables have been laid out for us BIOs, in an area I would come to call the BIO-sphere. We’re supplied with sharpies, printer paper and bundles of ballots, each one bound and numbered. It’s a bit like being a bank teller. You’re continually counting stuff, accounting for everything that moves across your desk. “Last time I did this it was quite different,” says Wendy, my wingperson on the right. “It wasn’t automated like this. It was all done on paper. People were here till 11pm balancing their books.”
7:30 am We huddle up for the pre-game pep talk. “First of all, thank you all for doing this,” the SVO says. “It’s going to be a long day. Stay hydrated. Keep calm. Be sure to take your break.” She warns us to be on guard for suspicious activity. The advance polling team has reported one or two instances of people trying to vote twice.
A few scrutineers come trickling in. They’re hired by the parties to make sure everything’s on the up and up in the voting stations. It quickly becomes clear to them that everything’s mundanely under control. It’s kind of a boring brief, being a scrutineer in Canada, compared to more contentious parts of the world. In 1994, my friend Alan, working on contract for the UN, got to scrutinize the election in South Africa when Nelson Mandela was running. Alan tells how one very old woman arrived at the voting station after having traveled for days on foot,. The old woman couldn’t read, so her daughter had to help her cast her ballot. “Who do you want to vote for, Mama?” Mama looked skyward, a smile broke over her face, and she said, softly … “Delllla.” To be part of that historical moment was one of the highlights of his life, Alan said.
8 am Doors open. First surge of customers. The keeners trying to make their mark on history before their workday begins.
Jen predicted that my biggest challenge was going to be to refrain from chatting with people and backing up the line. My first customer proves her right.
“Hey, I recognize that last name. Are you any relation to the poet?”
“Well, we’re all related if you go back far enough…”
“I had him for a professor once…”
(Backup forming.)
I’m on an in-ED and out-ED table. That means I handle voters who live inside this electoral district and also those outside of it. If they’re outside of it, the printer magically spits out a ballot with their electoral district’s candidates on it. Like a thermos that keeps hot stuff hot and cold stuff cold, it just … knows.
The EO on my left wing is a high-school student named Freya, whip-smart and moving her people through with friendly dispatch. Both she and my right wing are dressed in gray – so there can be no accusations of party favouritism. (My blue-checked shirt I shed at the last minute for gunmetal green, just to be safe.) Scrupulous care is taken to scrub the entire process of any hint of bias.
One of the scrutineers is already a little bored, and in a gap in the action we kindle up conversation. I tell him about how our Big Democracy Day is a family affair … the only hitch is that we’re spending it separately. “We’re all at different polling stations.”
“Did you plan that?”
“No, but maybe the organizers did. For the same reason that, you know, the president and vice-president never fly on the same plane. Spread the risk.”
You think rather highly of yourself, he did not say but probably wanted to. Instead, generously, he doubled down. “Kind of like how the pilots during WWII who wore a patch over one eye – in case of an atomic blast, you can still land the plane.”
“Bingo.”
Not once but twice I mistakenly issue a ballot that’s actually two ballots stuck together; both times the spare is returned by an honest voter. There’s no way they could have actually voted twice – that would have been caught by the TO’s. But still. A little rattling. Vigilance, man!
The best part of the ballot-issuing process is the oral statements we electoral officers are required to elicit. “Millie Alice Featherstone, do you declare that you are legally entitled to vote in this election, and that you have not already voted?”
“Yes and yes.”
People love to hear their name spoken. Some simply melt. It’s as if, in their mind, they had not expected their full name would be said back to them, with such care, by a stranger looking them in the eye, until they meet their maker.
“Christian Sebastian … Can I call you Christian Sebastian?”
“That would make my mother very happy.”
“And that’s what it’s all about, right?”
People are getting a little loopy. Probably it’s a function of what’s going on outside. The rain that started heavy in the night has amplified. Basically, it’s a monsoon out there. “Atmospheric river” is the term meteorologists are using. Folks are coming in bedraggled. The little voter cards that they got in the mail are soaked. They’re limp fish in their hands; the bar codes don’t scan.
“Good for you for showing up to vote in a Biblical downpour,” I tell one fellow.
“Well if I don’t vote I can’t complain about the government, can I?”
Someone discovers a filled-out ballot left in the voting booth. Possibly that voter remembered he left the pasta boiling … and just amscrayed. The ballot is treated like a live grenade. Is it valid? Is it spoiled? (The ballot is deemed to have been abandoned; by law, voters must cement their conviction to vote by bringing their ballot to the tabulating machine.)
10am “Most of your mistakes will happen in the first hour,” Dee had told us in training. Hey, we’re through that now! It’s true, I am feeling more confident. Although periodic curve balls keep coming. One gentleman presents, as his ID, a hydro bill and a prescription pill bottle. Does that count?
Trust the Kwerg!
(Kwerg says: it counts.)
Over at her ballot station in Lynn Valley, Jen’s covering the tabulating-machine action like a Trojan. Easing people to the finish line, where they will watch the machine suck in their ballot and add their voice to the chorus of democracy.
A voter spots the name on the side of the machine: Dominion Voting Systems.
“This thing certified by Trump?” he asks.
Over at their voting station near the University, Lila is working the front lines, greeting folks, checking their ID and sending them inside. They’ve given themselves the job of keeping things light. Buoying folks’ spirits on such a grim day. They’re keeping private count of how many people they makes laugh. They stop counting at 29.
11:30 am Back in my barn, a woman comes in with her mother who’s in her nineties. “Is your mom going to vote as well?” Darn right she is. It’s practically within her own lifetime that women got the vote in this country. She vividly remembers when she could only get a credit card in her husband’s name – even though she had a rock-solid job as a schoolteacher. You think being a hundred – and an atmospheric river – is going to stop her from voting today?
1 pm Gerry swans in with sharpies and paper. His position is kind of as a free safety. He roams, instinctively, going to where he’s needed most. He is giving the rest of us a master’s class in diplomacy. A woman approaches Wendy’s station. Turns out she is a permanent resident but not a Canadian citizen. “We’re very happy to have you,” Gerry tells her, “but I’m afraid you have to be a Canadian citizen to vote.”
By this point the early-day joshing (“Wet enough for ya?”) has given way to a dour heaviness. People are judge trudging through.
2 pm Sensing our stamina flagging, Gerry comes down the line high-fiving us all. A couple of the older BIOs aren’t sure what he’s up to with that.
“I feel like this is a young person’s game,” I say, on a bio break, to another electoral officer. “Putting in, like, a 15-hour day.” It seems to be a bimodal distribution of electoral officers – grade twelve students and retirees. Either they’re the ones who are most civic-minded, or broke. Or maybe both.
3:15 pm I take my official half-hour break. Make the mistake of checking phone and email messages. There’s one from the property manager – multiple units have flooded in our townhouse complex. Turns out there’s major flooding all over metro Vancouver. Manholes are popping out of the ground. Wide boulevards have become rivers. In a video clip, a stream is running basically right through a house in Deep Cove, unmooring it from its foundation.
4 pm Something weird just happened. A youngish woman – late-20s, early 30s – came in, with kind of a scattered, ditzy vibe about her. She was taking a movie on her phone as she walked around. “Sorry, no filming allowed,” Gerry said, shutting her down. “Oh, sorry, I didn’t know!” she said, giggling. Then she started asking questions of the EO’s. “Who should I vote for? What are the NDP’s colours again?” Feels like she might be trying to disrupt the election. Like, trying to capture proof that voters were being nudged one way or the other, that the whole enterprise was dirty. Gerry finally kicks her out of there, without quite laying a hand on her.
7 pm The customer base has tapered off. For long stretches we’re all alone. “Too bad it’s not like halloween candy – when you get near the end and you’ve got lots eft, you start giving out two or three ballots to everybody.”
We don’t yet know this in the room, but the news is reporting that the results are too close to call. The two main horses – the ruling NDP and the challenging Conservatives – are nostril to nostril. They say “every vote counts,” but this time it’s true. Scrutineers are starting to show up again. Everybody’s a little on edge.
8 pm Doors locked. It’s ova.
We hang around to help pack up and do our reconciliations: ballots issued, ballots spoiled, ballots cast out of the electoral district. There are handshakes all round. We did the people’s business. We trusted the Kwerg. It is all good.
Except the election results, which, as we catch up on them back home on TV, are genuinely troubling. British Columbia proves once again to be province of painfully divided loyalties.
The election is “too close to call.”
To be declared the winner, a party has to win the majority of the 93 ridings in the province. So (he said, doing the math): 47. By midnight, with 99.7 percent of votes in, the NDP has 46. The Conservatives 45. The Greens have 2. Looks like they will be kingmakers.
Someone posts on Twitter: “the moment that you learn that the results of one of the closest elections in provincial history might not get announced on time because an election official in one riding forgot their login credentials…” Cut to meme of Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber hollering “That’s Insane!”
We catch Sonia Furstenau’s concession speech. She’s head of the BC Green party. She lost her own riding, though the Greens got two seats. Kind of ironic, she notes, that voters had to brave an atmospheric river just to get to the polls, and that the party that might just take this thing doesn’t even believe in climate change. “But I guess that’s where we are.”
Not us, though. We are a family united. Totally worthwhile Big Day, we all conclude. Even if we had to be separate in our togetherness. Or together in our separateness. Esprit de corps is the foundation of democracy. That and trust. And protein.
Would we do it again? We may get a chance. No one will know for probably a week, till the recounts are done, but this could well result in a hung parliament, sending British Columbians back to the polls.
Stay tuned.