Gwichya Gwich'in ratifies election code
Half of voters cast ballots by phone or electronically for the first time
Paul Bickford
Northern News Services
Monday, June 22, 2015
TSIIGEHTCHIC/ARCTIC RED RIVER
In what's being called an historic decision, the Gwichya Gwich'in Band in Tsiigehtchic has ratified its first custom election code.
The ratification was in itself historic for the band but the way the process took place was also historic - almost half the votes were cast electronically on the Internet or by telephone. This type of voting is believed to be a first for the NWT.
There were 44 votes in favour of ratifying the election code and 11 against - an approval percentage of 80 per cent. (There was one undecided vote and two spoiled ballots.) Of all the votes, 28 were cast electronically.
The votes which pushed the total over the necessary quorum of 45 were cast on June 15. That was when band members were given the option to vote electronically or with paper ballots in the referendum during a separate municipal election in Tsiigehtchic.
The ratification process began on April 7 with the start of online and telephone voting, along with mail-in ballots and a polling station on April 15.
Lawrence Norbert, a member of the referendum committee and the election committee with the Gwichya Gwich'in Band, called the referendum results historic. He said it's the first time that any band in the North has used online and telephone voting and he predicted the voting process might be adopted by other Northern bands with members in various regions of the NWT, across Canada, in the U.S. and even overseas.
"They can do it with a telephone or online from Bangkok to Toronto to six miles from Tsiigethchic, if you can get a signal through," he said. "It really, I think, adds to the democratic process of voting."
While electronic voting is a first for the NWT, several municipalities in Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia have adopted the technology. Norbert called the ratification of the election code an "important milestone" for the Gwichya Gwich'in Band, adding it represents a higher and better standard of accountability and fairness in the leadership selection process.
"It's good to have something written," he said.
Graeme Drew, a Vancouver-based consultant who worked with the band on creating the election code and getting it ratified, also called the ratification historic.
"I think it's the way of the future," he said of electronic voting. "I think we're going to look back 20 years from now and talk about how we administered these paper ballots in voting, and just laugh."
Drew called the ratification a "huge step" for the Gwichya Gwich'in Band.
The ratification process had originally sought to reach a 20 per cent quorum of the 368 eligible voters in the band, which works out to 73 votes. However, a recent court decision involving a First Nation in Quebec lowered the quorum to 20 per cent of members for which a band has up-to-date addresses, which should be provided by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.
The Gwichya Gwich'in Band has current mailing addresses for 223 of its 368 members eligible to vote, meaning the number required for a 20-per-cent quorum became 45.
"That was a big step," said Drew.
One consequence of taking over two months to ratify the code was that an election for chief and five councillors originally set for June 15 was postponed to August to allow more time for the ratification process.
The band had planned to proceed with the election using the unratified code, but there was an appeal concerning the eligibility of a candidate. The election committee then decided not to proceed with the election until the code was ratified.
