I was appointed Chief Returning Officer for our union in September. On Nov. 30 I supervised my first ballot counting. By the numbers: about 2,800 envelopes verified, 4 ballots, 10 candidates, over 11,000 pieces of paper to sort and count. The group of about 12 to 15 volunteers took about five hours to do sort and count. Many of the volunteers recalled factory and assembly line jobs they had years ago.

I was pleased that the winning candidates' count margins were greater than the margin of error arising from missing ballots (i.e. sometimes not all 4 ballots were returned in an envelope).

During the last week of the election, the candidate emails to me took on a soap opera-like quality with accusations that a newly joined local was being bribed or told how to vote by a union staffer. That union staffer and an incumbent were an item, etc. “Fun” reading and, at least as far as I can tell, all specious information. Again the winning margins were great enough that the losing candidates would have trouble coming up with any justification for recounts or nullifying certain blocks of votes. I had to forward one set of emails to the staffer named and the staff manager. These were personnel problems now not something that the CRO could deal with.

It certainly has been a learning experience for me: I have learned to just provide rulings to election process questions. Trying to be helpful with examples or other types of advice seems to confuse people and then replies get garbled with stuff about the advice rather than the rulings.

I’m looking forward to having many less emails to deal with now.