Site MenuIndependent audit report on the performance of the duties and functions of Election Officials – By-elections December 11, 2017
5 Conclusion
We conclude that Election Officials properly exercised the powers conferred on them, and properly performed the duties and functions imposed on them under sections 143 to 149, 161 to 162 and 169 of the CEA, on all days of advance polling and on polling day for this by-election.
Overall, our testing results confirmed that regular electors (approximately 94% of electors) were processed appropriately. For the 6% of electors who were subject to special procedures, there were some inconsistencies in the completion of procedures for the Correction Certificates that were administered. However, these errors were not pervasive. Overall, there are no major findings stemming from our audit.
There were no significant changes to the overall design and delivery of the training program, including training and support materials such as guidebooks. Overall, EC's training program is comprehensive and is effective for providing prescriptive guidance and support to the temporary workforce that is hired to work at each by-election.
In reaching our conclusion, we considered the following factors:
- We were not charged with auditing the election results, our scope was limited and did not touch on the duties of all Election Officials and we did not assess all of the duties of the Election Officials we did observe. For example, we did not observe the counting of the ballots and recording and reporting of voting results.
- We did not note any major findings.
For the 6% of our sample subject to special procedures we did observe certain errors in the completeness of documentation and the administration of oaths for special procedures and have reported those errors as Other Observations.
The issues that we observed and reported do not affect our underlying conclusion as set out above.