City council not ready for electronic voting yet

Coun. Mitch Panciuk is strongly in favour of having council record their votes electronically. Photo by, James Gaughan, QNet News

By James Gaughan  

BELLEVILLE –A proposal to introduce a $3,000 electronic voting during their regular meetings was delayed by city council Monday night.

The decision occurred after city clerk Matt MacDonald told the politicians that not all the kinks.

“I’ve spoken to some clerks in other municipalities that have had issues with the system,” he said.

Council voted unanimously to delay the electronic voting system until city staff could come up with a complete report and ensure it runs smoothly.

“The manager of IT and myself will sit down, and he’ll deal with the technical side and cost on that end, and I’ll look at the process issues that may be there,” MacDonald said.

Implementing electronic voting for the nine councillors would cost about $3,000 MacDonald said.

Coun. Mitch Panciuk is strongly in favour of having council vote electronically. Currently, councillors raise their hands to vote on issues.  But now that the meetings are put on the Internet for the public to see Panciuk said that isn’t good enough.

“It is difficult for them to follow certain parts of the meeting, in particular when we vote on matters,” he said.

Panciuk pointed out that many other cities in the province like Toronto have their council members vote electronically as a way of being transparent to the public about how each person voted on issues.

“It’s important for people who want to maybe hold us accountable, either because they like what we did, or they are not so happy with what we did. They can go back and actually find proof of how we voted,” he said.

Panciuk said that while he’s disappointed to have to wait for electronic voting, he does understand the need to wait.

“There are some questions about how we have to change our rules in order to allow for it,” he said,

Council will wait until April to look at introducing electronic voting.