Council picked the cheaper — but not local — option to provide telephone and e-voting for the next election. Scytl Secure Electronic Voting, a Spanish firm, bid $553,007 for the contract to distribute voter notification cards and two weeks of advance polling over the Internet and by phone for October’s municipal election. Intelivote Systems Inc. from Dartmouth has previously done the work but their bid was $330,000 over Scytl’s proposal.
Several councillors raised concerns about the foreign firm and the fact this will be their first Canadian election. Coun. Darren Fisher said local firms should be given extra weight in the scoring process. “This is such a short window that if it goes off the rails it will be a disaster,” he said.
Coun. Dawn Sloane said HRM needs to buy local. “I’d rather go with a local company period and I know it’s going to cost us more,” she said. Coun. Linda Mosher countered, saying council just doesn’t like change and $330,000 is a lot to spend just to buy local.
Full Article: Metro – Spanish firm to provide e-voting service.