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THE BULLETIN PROUDLY SERVING KIMBERLEY AND AREA SINCE 1932 | Vol. 82, Issue 210 | www.dailybulletin.ca
Counting by computer
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Automated voting machines will tally the votes in municipal election C AROLYN GR ANT Bulletin Editor
For the first time, votes in Kimberley’s upcoming municipal election will be counted by automated voting machine. It’s a change from tradition, as there used to be four separate ballots for mayor, council, school district trustee and referendums, as in the 2011 electoral cycle. Once ballots were marked, they were deposited into separate boxes and hand-counted. The new system will involve a single paper ballot, but a machine will take the ballots and deposit them directly into a sealed ballot box, recording all the results on a memory card. Preliminary results should be available within an hour or two of polls closing. These are the same type of machines that were recently used in the Toronto municipal election, according to Chief Election Officer Kelly Harms The same type of machines will be used in Cranbrook’s election and in roughly 45 other municipalities across B.C. For the advance polling, the memory cards will track the results and be kept under strict lock and key by Harms. Fears of tampering are overblown, according to Harms, considering any meddler would have to have access to the machine, to the memory cards and to the ballots themselves. So here’s what the voting process will look like at the general election on Saturday, Nov. 15 at Centennial Hall in Kimberley. Voters will be given a paper ballot to fill out. After marking their preferred candidates for one (1) mayor and up to six (6) councillors, the ballot is then fed into the machine, which will store the results on the internal memory card. On the ballot, each candidate will have a blank oval next to their name, which must be coloured in by black pen provided to make the selection. Once the ballot is filled out, voters can turn it upside down to preserve the secrecy of their selections, and feed it directly into the machine. See COUNT, page 3
BRIAN CLARKSON PHOTO
This fall, Wildsight hosted community apple harvest days in Kimberley and Cranbrook. A group of volunteers picked apples from unloved local trees and then invited everyone to come help with the apple juicing process. Seeing the apple juice start to flow from the press is always an exciting moment for the kids. The harvest days are a chance for anyone to try out Wildsight’s free loaner equipment including orchard ladders, pickers, apple juice presses, apple sauce makers, and dehydrators. There are still plenty of apples on local trees and it isn’t too late to make yourself some juice. See wildsight.ca/apples for all the details. Above, Dan picks apples for the press.
Learning to live on $3 a day
Coalition seeks to raise income assistance rates TRE VOR CR AWLEY Townsman Staff
Imagine having a grocery budget of only $21 per week. That’s $3 a day. A Cranbrook woman recently completed the Welfare Food Challenge, a public awareness campaign that is looking to increase income assistance rates for low
income people and families. Darcy Victor spent the week of Oct. 16-22 living out the food challenge, budgeting only $21 over seven days for her grocery budget. Needless to say, there were obvious challenges that come with such a tight budget, Victor said. “Basically once the rent and the bills and everything are paid for someone, an able bodied person living on income assistance, that is all that is left per week to purchase food,” said Victor. The main challenge is trying to
stretch the grocery budget to cover the week with healthy meal options, which was extremely difficult, added Victor. “The first challenge is looking at the prices in the store,” she said. “To actually have to physically sit there and look at the prices—and finding small quantities of food— was challenging. You can’t just buy a cup or two of rice at Safeway or Superstore.” As part of the challenge, she wasn’t allowed to use any resources from the Food Bank, but she
managed to purchase food in small quantities from the Salvation Army. “I got $8.50 worth of food from there, and included a cup of brown sugar, two cups of oatmeal, four cups of rice, two cups of brown beans and kidney beans,” Victor said. It wasn’t long until her diet, which was suffering due to the budgetary constraints of the challenge, started to impact her physical and mental well-being. See CHALLENGE