Leamington and Kingsville are considering withholding payment to the company that conducted Internet voting this election after results came in hours later than expected. “I’m very disappointed,” said Leamington clerk Brian Sweet, who is bearing the brunt of complaints in his municipality about how long it took to release voting results Monday night. “We were under the impression we would have our results between 8:30 and quarter to nine, possibly, before 8:30,” Sweet said. Instead, like in Kingsville and Tecumseh, results were not released to waiting crowds until close to 11 p.m. “What was frustrating for us was we were not getting results and we weren’t getting any information or time estimates either,” Sweet said. “We didn’t understand what the problem was.”
Internet voting in Leamington, Kingsville and Tecumseh — as well as other municipalities across Ontario — was conducted by a company called Scytl. Scytl put out a statement Tuesday explaining the delays in reporting results.
“We can now confirm that our quality assurance process detected an inconsistency in the naming of certain election results files,” wrote Brian O’Connor, general manager of Scytl’s North American operations. “Upon the detection of an anomaly, Scytl reran the tabulation and conducted a thorough manual audit.” The “vague” letter did not satisfy Sweet. He said even the letter was late — by 12 to 15 hours. “I’m not sure what that means,” said Sweet of Scytl’s explanation.
The letter’s author was unavailable for comment Monday. But the company’s vice-president of marketing, contacted in Virginia, said he regrets the unfortunate wording of the letter. “That statement was not great,” Bo O’Dea told The Star. “People are seizing on that word anomaly.”
Full Article: Angry towns consider withholding payment to Internet voting company | Windsor Star.