Elections Manitoba

WHAT’S NEW AT THE POLLS

MODERNIZING VOTING

When you go to vote in the 43rd general election, you may notice some changes to the voting process. These changes will make voting quicker and more convenient for Manitobans.

NEW IN 2023

Vote Anywhere in Your Electoral Division

Voters can now vote at any polling place in their electoral division on election day. Once there, voters will cast their ballot on a first come, first served basis.

During advance voting, Manitobans can still vote at any advance poll in Manitoba.

More Technology

• Laptops with access to the voters list.
• Scanners to scan voter information cards and quickly find voters on the voters list.
• Printers for printing ballots on demand in place of write-in ballots.
• Vote Counting Machines to scan and accurately record ballots and provide results.

Vote Counting Machines

Vote counting machines, also known as tabulators, scan and record ballots and then provide a count at the end of the night.
See directive

Voting Process

• Voters mark their paper ballot behind a privacy screen.
• They put their marked ballot in a secrecy sleeve and bring it to the voting officer.
• The ballot is fed into the vote counting machine without the voting officer or anyone else seeing the voter’s selection.
• The vote counting machine scans the ballot, records the selection, and saves an image of the ballot.

Results

At the close of voting on election day, vote counting machines will produce a print-out with the results of voting. The results will show:

• the number of votes each candidate received,
• the number of rejected ballots,
• the number of declined ballots, and
• the total number of ballots cast.

Only authorized election officials can access the results and only after the polls have closed on election day.

Accuracy and Security

Vote counting machines feature many levels of security to maintain the integrity of voting:

• Rigorous testing to ensure all machines are in proper working order and can accurately read ballots.
• Secure storage and shipping.
• Certain functions, such as opening and closing the polls and producing the count, can only be done by authorized election officials.
• Set-up, opening and closing procedures can be observed by scrutineers.
• Vote counting machines are not connected to the Internet.
• Ballots contain security features to ensure that vote counting machines can only accept ballots issued by Elections Manitoba.

What’s Not Changing

All votes will be recorded on paper ballots. Paper ballots will be retained for recount purposes.

Voting is still safe, secure, and secret. Nobody will know how you voted.