City Councillors abuse the recorded voting process - city decides to buy an electronic vote recording system.

News 100 redBy Pepper Parr

July 20th, 2016

BURLINGTON, ON

 

Will wonders never cease?

The city is going to move to an electronic vote recording system that will put an end to the cumbersome call for recorded votes that took place at the last two meetings of city council.

Sharman July 2016

Ward 5 Councillor Paul Sharman forced city council to record their votes on everything they did – even the accepting of the agenda. He said he was making a political point.

Councillor Sharman asked for more than a dozen recorded votes at a July 5th  meeting and Councillor Meed Ward asked for almost as many recorded votes at the Council meeting last night.

Those council votes will now be done automatically by having the members of council press a button rather than have to stand up and be physically counted for each vote.

The Staff Direction was to:

Direct the City Clerk to purchase and install an electronic vote recording system in the Council Chambers, the cost to be charged to the capital budget for the Agenda Management solution; and

Hold in abeyance, sections 33.7-33.9 of Procedure By-law 37-2014 until a vote recording system is installed.

The question many have now is – which votes will the technology record?

This city council takes the position that the only votes it records are those taken at a city council meetings which is where everything done is made official.

Council vote Dec 18-14 Water Street

Council during a recorded vote: Those standing were voting for the motion.

The real grunt work gets done at the Standing committee meetings – there are four different standing committees – Development and Infrastructure; Community and Corporate Services; Audit Committee and Committee of the Whole.

These are the meetings at which the public gets to speak for ten minutes if they delegate and where debate is often boisterous. It is also the meetings at which city staff attend – they speak very openly and inform council on the reports they present.

These are the meat and potatoes meetings – which this Council has decided that the votes taken are not recorded. The minutes of the meetings do say how a vote went – passed or failed to pass. The public report does not say how individual members of council voted.

The city’s procedural bylaw, which sets out how meetings are run and votes recorded has a section that is being waived while the electronic system is put in place. The section being waived says:

33.7 Any member, in Council Meetings, immediately before or after a vote is taken, may require a recorded vote to be taken on the question concerned. Recorded votes shall not be permitted in Committee Meetings.

33.8 When a recorded vote is permitted and required, the Chair shall pose the question and the Clerk will call for those members in favour to rise, at which time the Clerk shall record the name of each Member standing and his vote in favour, and upon completion of the recording, the Clerk will call for those members opposed to rise, at which time the Clerk shall record the name of each Member standing and his vote in opposition. On the appropriate form, the Clerk will also record the number of Members absent and/or abstained.

33.9 On a recorded vote, a failure to vote by a member who is present at the meeting at the time of the vote and who is qualified to vote shall be deemed a negative vote.

The Standing committees report to Council where just about everything is rubber stamped. Many council meetings take less than half an hour. The Mayor has a tendency to race through the meetings – one was pretty close to less than 15 minutes in length.
Public meetings are not the Mayor’s strength.

Meed Ward H&S profile

Ward 2 Councillor Meed Ward asked for more than seven recorded votes at the most recent city council meeting.

In February of 2013 city council decided that recording all the votes wasn’t necessary Here is the comment made at that time.
“With respect to recorded voting at standing committee meetings, members of Council on the review team expressed differing viewpoints. Acknowledging that recommendations from committee are intended to be a preliminary position on a matter, it was felt that recording a member’s vote at that stage of deliberation could inhibit a member from changing his or her position later at Council should new information become available.

“It was also noted that recorded voting would slow the transaction of business at committee meetings. As the review team did not have consensus on the matter, a recommendation on recorded voting is not included within this report and would require direction from Council. Nonetheless, the sentiment of the review team was that if recorded votes were to be permitted at Committee, these would be restricted to the main motions (and main motions as amended) but would not be applied to amendments themselves or any secondary motions tabled.

School-board-votes

Partial view of the Board of Education screen that shows how trustees voted.

The Halton District Board of Education bought an electronic system a number of months ago that is close to perfect. There is one Burlington trustee who gets confused when it comes to determining which button to press but other than that it works very smoothly.

When there is a vote the school board chair turns on the voting system and lights show up. When all the trustees have voted all the light go out – the chair then presses a button and they know in an instant who voted which way.

The system was provide by Hamilton Audio Visual – who will hopefully let the city know what they can do them

We elect our members of council democratically and have a right to know how they vote on every issue. Many council members aren’t very keen on letting the public know how they vote at Standing Committee meetings. They forget that deciding what they are directing staff to do is not about them – it is about the people who pay the taxes – and that would be you.

Background:

Sharman asks for recorded votes on everything at a council meeting

Past debates on voting at city council

 

Return to the Front page
Print Friendly, PDF & Email

4 comments to City Councillors abuse the recorded voting process – city decides to buy an electronic vote recording system.

  • John

    If I misunderstood these remarks , my mistake.

    “City Councillors abuse the recorded voting process – city decides to buy an electronic vote recording system.”

    “The city is going to move to an electronic vote recording system that will put an end to the cumbersome call for recorded votes that took place at the last two meetings of city council.”

  • John

    There was no decision on this vote recording system, just a notice that a motion would be raised at the next council meeting.
    That was questioned as it provided no committee opportunity for discussion or provided any detail of what was being considered.
    In the end it was referred to committee sometime in the fall, they will have that discussion and provide their recommendations to council.

    There is still a lot to happen before any new system could be considered.

    Editor’s note:
    We did not say a decision had been made; we did comment that a decision should be made and that all the votes made should be public.

  • astheworldturns

    No – not meat and potatoes meetings…they are smoke and mirror meetings. It is the law…delegations, that is. But it is absolute b.s.!!!

    Editor’s note:
    These are indeed very much meat and potato meetings. You may not like some of th conclusions they come to – but they do debate vigorously.

  • Joan Gallagher-Bell

    Rather than a reply could you disclose who put forth the idea of the electronic vote please?