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HomeMy WebLinkAboutLGS-006-21Clarington Staff Report If this information is required in an alternate accessible format, please contact the Accessibility Coordinator at 905-623-3379 ext. 2131. Report To: General Government Committee Report Number: LGS-006-21 Date of Meeting: January 25, 2021 By-law Number: Submitted By: Rob Maciver, Director of Legislative Services Reviewed By: Andrew C. Allison, CAO Resolution#: GG-063-21, C-049-21 File Number: Report Subject: Voters' List for Municipal Elections Recommendation: 1. That Report LGS-006-21 be received for information. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Report Overview Page 2 This report arises out of Council's direction to Staff to vet the voters' list. It provides information on previous voters' list cleansing; and a review of options available for improving the voters' list accuracy. 1. Background 1.1 Council approved the following General Government Committee Resolution #GG-304-19 from May 6, 2019: That Staff report back to a June, 2020 General Government Committee meeting as to a process for: a) The vetting of the voters' list to prevent ineligible individuals from voting; and b) Ensuring that eligible individuals can be added to the voters' list. 1.2 Prior to the above resolution, Council had also taken a stand on a "Voters' List Working Group" by approving the following Resolution #JG-016-18 which endorsed the Town of Kearney's resolution: That the following resolution, regarding Voters' List for Municipal Elections, be endorsed by the Municipality of Clarington: Whereas concern over the quality of the Municipal Voters' List is not a new phenomenon; And whereas in 2012, the Association of Municipal Managers, Clerks and Treasurers of Ontario (AMCTO) published a "Voters' List Position Paper" and since that time has been advocating for transformational changes to the way that Ontario creates and maintains the Voters' List for municipal elections; And whereas the Preliminary List of Electors which forms the Voters' List in Ontario is supplied by data from the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC); Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Page 3 And whereas despite the incremental changes made by MPAC, MPAC has a limited ability to fix the currency and accuracy issues that impairs the current process and the Voters' List continues to be flawed with data inaccuracies and outdated information; And whereas a transformational solution to the way that the Voters' List is created and managed is required; Now therefore be it resolved that the Council of the Corporation of the Town of Kearney supports the re-establishment of the multi -stakeholder working group between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Ministry of Finance, AMCTO, MPAC and Elections Ontario in exploring and identifying ways to create and maintain the Voters' List for Municipal Elections; And further Council requests an update be provided from this `Voters' List Working Group' on the transformational solutions being discussed; And further that this resolution be circulated to all Ontario Municipalities for their consideration and support. 1.3 The voters' list identifies people who are eligible to vote in the municipal election, by name, qualifying address, school support and residency. 1.4 Staff delayed response to the above Council resolution due to the seemingly imminent changes to the Municipal Elections Act (MEA) to make Elections Ontario take over the voters' list (something that AMCTO has been advocating for years). On October 1, 2020, Bill 204, Helping Tenants and Small Businesses Act, 2020 received Royal Assent which resulted in making changes to the MEA, among other acts, that would "create a single register of voters for municipal and provincial elections, which is expected to be more accurate, could mean fewer corrections for voters at polling stations, fewer delays for people on election day, and may reduce costs for municipalities."' 1 Province of Ontario, News Release, "Ontario Introduces Legislation to Freeze Residential Rent in 2021 ", available at: https:Hnews.ontario.ca/en/release/58396/ontario-introduces- legislation-to-freeze-residential-rent-in-2021 accessed on January 12, 2021. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Page 4 1.5 The voters' list is created, for each election, based on information that is held by the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) until January 1, 2023, when Elections Ontario (the Chief Elections Officer) will take over as the election authority and will prepare and maintain the list. Municipal Elections Act 1.6 Eligible Voter - Subsection 17(2) of the MEA states: A person is entitled to be an elector at an election held in a local municipality if, on voting day, he or she, a) resides in the local municipality or is the owner or tenant of land there, or the spouse of such owner or tenant; b) is a Canadian citizen; c) is at least 18 years old; and d) is not prohibited from voting under subsection (3) or otherwise by law. 1.7 Prohibited from Voting — Subsection 17(3) of the MEA states: The following are prohibited from voting: 1. A person who is serving a sentence of imprisonment in a penal or correctional institution. 2. A corporation. 3. A person acting as executor or trustee or in any other representative capacity, except as a voting proxy in accordance with section 44. 4. A person who was convicted of the corrupt practice described in subsection 90 (3), if voting day in the current election is less than five years after voting day in the election in respect of which he or she was convicted. Municipality of Clarington Page 5 Report LGS-006-21 1.8 Voters' List Data —The MEA states that the list may be based on data from any source, including the most recent enumeration under the Assessment Act; information from the records of the Registrar General (if MPAC and the Registrar General enter into an agreement) regarding the registration of births, deaths, and changes of name. However, this will change on January 1, 2023 to "must be based on the permanent register of electors". The preliminary list shall contain the name and address of each person who is entitled to be an elector and any additional information the clerk needs to determine for which offices each elector is entitled to vote. An elector's name shall appear on the preliminary list for a local municipality only once. An elector is entitled to vote only in the ward where he or she resides, even if the elector resides in one ward and is the owner or tenant of land in a different ward or is the spouse of an owner or tenant of land in a different ward. 1.9 Section 23 of the MEA states that, on or before September 1 in an election year, the Clerk shall have the voters' list reproduced and determine where and at what time applications for revisions to the list may be made. 1.10 Section 24 of the MEA allows for electors to apply, during the period that begins on September 1 and ends at the close of voting on voting day, to make an application to the clerk requesting that the person's name be added to, changed, or removed from the voters' list. 1.11 Section 28 of the MEA states that the Clerk shall prepare and certify the voters' list for use in each voting place established under section 45. 2. MPAC's Preliminary List of Electors (PLE) 2.1 "MPAC's data for property owners is relatively accurate; this should be expected given that MPAC's expertise is property assessment. The issue with MPAC's data is with a population MPAC is not designed to serve: boarders. MPAC refers to individuals who are not property owners as boarders. The MEA refers to these people as tenants. Boarders could include adult children living at home, renters, individuals living in assisted living facilities, or students living in a property they do not own. Regarding currency, between the times MPAC provides the PLE to clerks and the election, recent property sales data may not have time to be included on the voters' list." 2 2 Wilton, Paul, "Ontario Municipal Voters' List Reform Project" (2018). MPA Major Research Papers. Page 22. Available at: https://it.Iib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1184&context=lqp-mrps Accessed on January 18, 2021. Municipality of Clarington Page 6 Report LGS-006-21 3. Corrections by the Clerk 3.1 Once the Clerk receives the preliminary list, the Clerk may correct any obvious errors. Since 2010, Clarington has used a software called "Voterview" by Datafix, to manage the voters' list and election workers. 3.2 Using the 2018 Municipal Elections as an example, the following are the changes that occurred to the list when we first received the preliminary list of electors (PLE) on August 22, 2018 (i.e. when the 2018 information is merged with the 2014 information), including conflicts identified by the Voterview software: • 222 elector conflicts • 17070 electors deleted • 18363 electors added • 7709 electors updated • 48 property conflicts • 2338 properties added • 8032 properties updated As a result, our starting point for the preliminary list was 64,758 electors and 31,866 properties. 3.3 The following data cleansing was recommended by the Voterview system and each one was addressed by a member of the Municipal Clerk's Department: • 123 duplicate electors • 1561 mailing address issues • 5 elector name anomalies • 0 invalid roll numbers • 279 merge conflicts Municipality of Clarington Page 7 Report LGS-006-21 3.4 On September 711, we received a supplemental voters list from MPAC, which resulted in the following additional issues, which were also addressed manually: • 6 duplicate electors • 636 mailing address issues • 1 elector name anomalies • 0 invalid roll numbers • 722 merge conflicts 3.5 The following are some of the cleansing steps that the Clarington Municipal Clerk's Department performs to ensure that the voters' list is as "accurate as possible", as outlined in a Departmental Procedure, as part of our "Gross Error Corrections" process, which needs to take place in September of an election year: • Review any duplicate electors • Review all streets to ensure that they are in the correct ward. • Review spelling of street names for correctness. • Manually review all the street names in Clarington's GIS for Wilmot Creek, with the street names for Wilmot Creek in Voterview. • Change the addresses for institutions so that the mailing addresses do not go to the head office of the institution (e.g. in Toronto, for example). 3.6 After the preliminary list is corrected, the list becomes the voters' list. The following information is from the Voterview system, of changes made between September loth and Voting Day in 2018, which includes the "live changes" made directly into the system on Advance Voting Days: • Elector Added — 996 • Elector Deleted — 406 • Elector Moved — 376 • Elector Updated — 2,705 • Elector Voting Proxy — 19 Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Page 8 3.7 As per the MEA, the Clerk must forward changes to MPAC within 30 days of the election (i.e. November 21, 2018 for the 2018 Elections). The following information shows changes made between Voting Day and November 21, 2018: • Elector Added — 1,146 • Elector Deleted — 46 • Elector Moved — 367 • Elector Updated — 1,719 3.8 Beginning in 2018, throughout the intervening years between elections, each time the Municipal Clerk's Department receives a Statement of Death of someone's passing who lives in the Municipality of Clarington, we update Voterview so that they do not appear it any subsequent voters' lists, in particular if we were to have a bi-election. Between November 21, 2018 and January 14, 2021, we have removed 581 deceased electors. 4. Corrections by MPAC 4.1 Beginning in 2014, MPAC discontinued the paper -driven process of enumeration which occurred prior to the municipality receiving the PLE and switched to an online process using voterlookup.ca. Through voterlookup.ca, Ontario residents could find out whether their information was accurately reflected on MPAC's PLE for municipal and school board elections. Eligible electors could also update their information, add a name to an address, or change their school support.3 MPAC provided a communications toolkit to all Ontario municipalities to promote the use of voterlookup.ca as they had discovered that people go to their local municipality for information regarding elections. For the 2018 municipal election voterlookup.ca was launched on March 12, 2018 and was taken offline on August 30, 2018 to ensure that changes were made with the Municipal Clerk once the PLE was received by the municipality. After the election MPAC reported the following changes for the Municipality of Clarington:4 Phase 1 Voterlookup.ca Activity Active Searches — 1,195 Total Changes to names data — 346 3 Municipal Communications Toolkit, MPAC. 4 Examining the 2018 Enumeration Process, MPAC. Municipality of Clarington Page 9 Report LGS-006-21 Updates from National Register of Electors data Total changes to names data — 7,453 Pre -election Data Cleanse Deceased names (Ministry of Government and Consumer Services) — 930 Duplicate Names — 3,578 Other* - 23,186 Total changes to names data - 27,694 *Under 18, Corporations and Estates, Electors who already have their vote somewhere else in the municipality, Not Canadian, Unconfirmed Citizenship Status. Phase 2 Exceptions Files Total changes to names data - 1,172 Phase 3 Post -election Revision Processing Added — 1,449 Deleted — 694 Updated - 2,617 Moved — 607 Total changes to names data - 5,367 4.2 It is important to note that, during the time voterlookup.ca was active, which is early in the municipal election cycle, only 1.8% (1,1955) of electors chose to search for their information. 4.3 After August 30t", when MPAC's voterlookup.ca was taking offline, Clarington had their own online voter portal until October 17t", the final advance voting day, when the list was "frozen" in order to provide time for printing of hard copies for Voting Day. 4.4 Although voterlookup.ca was taken off line for this period, it is now live again and anyone can use it to check if they will appear on the PLE. 5 Examining the 2018 Enumeration Process, MPAC. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 5. Authority Page 10 5.1 Council's request to vet the voters' list to prevent ineligible individuals from voting is similar to the goal of the enumeration process which is to correct information prior to it becoming a part of the PLE and eventually the Voters' List. The MEA, subsection 19(3) states: "The preliminary list may be based on data from any source, including, (a) the most recent enumeration under the Assessment Act; and (b) information from the records in the office of the Registrar General regarding the registration of births, deaths and changes of name made under the Vital Statistics Act and the Change of Name Act." 5.2 The Assessment Act, R.S.O. 1990, subsection 15(1) states: "For the purposes of the Municipal Elections Act, 1996, the assessment corporation shall conduct an enumeration of the inhabitants of a municipality and locality at the times and in the manner prescribed by the Minister." 5.3 Therefore, the authority to do an enumeration rests with the assessment corporation, in this case MPAC. As described above, MPAC no longer uses a paper driven method of conducting the enumeration and now uses an online website to fulfill this requirement. This rule, however, put the onus on individuals to not only ensure that their information is correct but also remove themselves from the list. For example, parents of children who have moved away cannot remove them from the list. 6. Other Municipalities General 6.1 Staff are unaware of any recent Ontario municipality that has undertaken an "early voter verification or outreach" in an attempt to improve the voters' list. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 City of Toronto Page 11 6.2 "In 2006, MPAC notified the City of Toronto that 13.6% (276,682) of individuals on the PLE had unconfirmed citizenship. The clerk began an outreach campaign which attempted to connect with these individuals. Of those contacted, 13% responded to the clerk's campaign. Responses were received from 422 individuals who replied that they were not a citizen. Kin reported 148 of the individuals as deceased and 254 were reported as having moved out of the city. Responses were received from 32 individuals under the age of 18. Low responses to enumeration efforts are common at the federal, provincial and municipal level.116 City of Kawartha Lakes 6.3 Clarington's new Deputy Clerk was part of the election team that coordinated the 2014 municipal election in the City of Kawartha Lakes. As a result of issues in previous elections with mailing addresses and Canada Post discontinuing the use of rural route (RR) numbers, 25,000 mailing addresses from the City's tax system were compared to the PLE. Four staff members that were part of the election team spent approximately 3 weeks conducting this review. Although exact figures are not available, the number of returned envelopes was down considerably from the previous election but there were still over 300 returned envelopes that were readdressed and mailed out and numerous others that could not be readdressed for a variety of reasons. 7. Options 7.1 Regarding the Council direction to create a process for vetting the voters' list to prevent ineligible individuals from voting, all options considered relate to the accuracy of the voters' list. The municipality has limited control over the voters' list which starts as a preliminary list from MPAC. As stated above, after the 2022 municipal election, MPAC will no longer have this responsibility and it will be transferred to Elections Ontario. One of the hopes being that the accuracy of the list will be improved, however that does not assist the 2022 municipal election. 6 Wilton, Paul, "Ontario Municipal Voters' List Reform Project" (2018). MPA Major Research Papers. Page 13. Available at: https://it.Iib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1184&context=lgp-corps Accessed on January 18, 2021. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Option 1 — Early Advertising Page 12 7.2 Staff could begin advertising now in local newspapers, and on social media, regarding the importance of ensuring that your information is correct and provide a phone number for MPAC and the voterlookup.ca website which can still be used to check and update information. 7.3 This would be the least costly option ($5,000 estimated for advertising) but also likely the least effective. As stated above, during the 2018 election year less than 2% of electors searched their information using MPAC's voterlookup.ca website when it was operational (March 12, 2018 to August 30, 2018) during an election year. A request for electors to confirm their information during a non -election year may see a similar or possibly lower response rate. Option 2 — Postcards 7.4 This option involves sending a postcard to every address in the municipality with instructions on how to ensure their information is accurate in the MPAC database. Like Option 1, the postcard will provide MPAC's phone number and MPAC's voterlookup.ca website for people to use. This card could include all aspects of adding, correcting and deleting information from the Voters' List. It could also include information on how to deal with borders, tenants, and students. 7.5 This is a more costly option than Option 1 but is more direct and will reach all households in the municipality. The cost is estimated at $34,000 which includes the printing, postage, and advertising of the postcards, but does not include the Staff time involved. This option would not require the use of a printing house to prepare the list on the cards, which is the additional $6,000 included in Option #3. There also may be a slight savings in the postage because of the different type of card, but that is unknown at this time. Option 3 — Voter Verification Cards 7.6 Staff would create a mail out to all addresses in the municipality that would include a list (up to nine people) of everyone registered to vote at that address. Like the other two options, it would include the contact information for MPAC, so people know who to contact if changes are required. 7.7 The estimated cost of this option is $40,000 which includes the preparation of the list, printing, postage, and advertising of the postcards, but does not include the Staff time involved. This costing is based on the same price as the 2018 voter notification cards, for 32,000 households. This costing is what has been included in the proposed 2021 budget, as a placeholder. Municipality of Clarington Report LGS-006-21 Options Review Page 13 7.8 With Option 3, there is a concern regarding the privacy of personal information ending up at an address where they no longer live. In an election year, we have authority to do so, however it is unclear whether we have the same authority outside of the election updating period. 7.9 All options above are reliant upon individuals taking the time to review their own information and contacting MPAC if changes are required. With less than 2% of electors reviewing their information (using voterlookup.ca) during the 2018 election period when significantly more advertising and focus was on the election, it is unlikely that any of these options would see a greater return then that. Most of the changes to the list occur after the Clerk receives the PLE and people either get a ballot or not or the information that they receive is incorrect. 7.10 With any of these complications, we run the risk of confusing voters with the Provincial Election which will take place June 2, 2022. If we do any of the above options prior to June 2022 they may only check their voting information for one of the elections. If we do any of the above options after June 2022, it runs into the actual voter information package that will be necessary for internet voting and which will not be distributed until September 2022. 8. Concurrence The Director of Financial Services/Treasurer has reviewed this report and concurs with the recommendations. 9. Conclusion Although Staff could execute several of the above options to improve the accuracy of the list, the timing is problematic and the value for money is questionable, so Staff are not recommending pursuing any of the options for the 2022 elections. Regarding the ability to add eligible voters, this is part of the Clerk's Election Procedures and will be well defined. It may include being sent a replacement voting information package through the mail or attending a Voting Assistance Centre to obtain the information during the voting period. Staff Contact: June Gallagher, Municipal Clerk, 905-623-3379 ext. 2102 or jgallagher@clarington.net. Attachments: Not Applicable Interested Parties: There are no interested parties to be notified of Council's decision.